Chapter Twenty-One:Stitches for Whiskers

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The month was up and Emily was duly returned access to her bank account, allowed out of the home, and to sit with her friends at lunch once more despite the fact that the removal of these things hadn't really stopped her enjoying them anyway. It did not, however, cause the return of her donated clothing, which she was livid about.

And the space on her dresser where her CD player had once sat remained empty. Every night she looked at it and knew: she would never, ever forgive her mother for this.

Aside from that, life returned to normal for some time. The only change was that, after Elizabeth had been late one afternoon to Emily's etiquette lessons and walked in right as the tutor had informed Emily that she had a repellant smile that explained why her mother disapproved of her, was that that tutor was not only promptly fired but also, Emily suspected, would never again be working within Rome. And that was the end of that, Elizabeth calling both children into her office and informing them that if an adult was to ever speak to them like that again that they were to tell her immediately—and that they were also not to take any notice of the words said, since anyone who said such despicable and untrue things was clearly unworthy of notice.

Spencer, from then onwards, always held those words dear, because people were often cruel to him without reason but now he had confirmation that he didn't have to listen.

Emily just shrugged.

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"Are you sneaking out again?" Spencer asked Emily as she burst into his room asking if he'd seen her purse and watch. "It's late and we have class in the morning. And you have two papers due that I know you haven't started."

"I'll write them tomorrow," she said, sagely side-stepping his disapproval. She bounced over to where he was sitting at his desk surrounded by textbooks, patting his cheek and earning a scowl in return. "Don't worry about me, Spence, I'm an intellectual."

"You are not. I'm taking the final exams to graduate at the end of the school year and they won't let you sit them with me unless you're brilliant, Emily, you know this. You're still only on the junior curriculum—you need to start your final year, otherwise—"

"Spence, it's fine," she soothed. "I have months. We got me through a whole grade so fast, we can do it again."

"Not if you fail both these papers—" he tried to say, but she was already gone, leaving him sitting there with his textbooks feeling the upcoming finals looming over him like a monolith. He knew how this ended: he'd take the exams, not only pass but stun the examiners, and then he'd graduate and be off to college by fall. Back in the States. If Emily passed, with her.

If she didn't, alone.

He couldn't be alone. With a weary heart and well aware of what he was doing and the monumental disservice he was doing her by doing it, he took a fresh pad of paper out of his desk, picked up his pen, and took a deep breath.

A Theory on Radicalisation of At-Risk Youths, he wrote carefully along the top, mimicking her handwriting expertly. By Emily Prentiss.

Just this once.

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It was just for tonight, she promised him over and over, meaning it every time—but there was always one more invitation, one more unmissable night. One more midnight moon with Matthew driving and Fiona half out the window, laughing at the wind in her hair. One more watching the stars dash by through the sunroof of Matthew's car, curled in the backseat in John's arms and feeling safe and loved and wanted and wild and alive.

She couldn't explain it to Spencer. He didn't get how important it was—she fit with them like she'd never fit before, like she was one of those jigsaw puzzles made with the curved edges when everyone else in her life was a children's five-hundred-piece standard. She just couldn't fit, no matter how much easier it would make it. She listened to Spencer and Elizabeth talk politics at the dinner table and loathed every inch of it for the pretence it was and she went to church every Sunday and realised that there was nothing here for her. Matthew stood beside her in the pews, his parents having agreed to take her with them since they were avid members of the same church Elizabeth attended, and she knew he was questioning every gospel 'truth' the same as she was.

And these nights might have been small in Spencer's eyes, but they weren't to her. They couldn't be. She risked her life deliberately, with John risking his beside her because if they died while they were living at least there was a sign that they'd bothered to try. And there was no moment that she was more aware of living than when she'd climbed the outside of a great building with John, hanging from the edge and screaming with equal parts fear and exhilaration as the distance made a mockery of her childhood tree. With space around her and the stars within reach, she didn't need anyone to hold her here—the only thing between her and the ground was her own will.

This was living.

But she always went home. Sometimes, it went flawlessly, sneaking in through the window without being noted. Sometimes, it took some fast-talking to get the security staff to let her past without telling her mother, usually on the nights when she was too drunk to climb to her window. And, after John introduced her to infinity in the form of a small tablet that dissolved into bitter nothing on the back of her tongue, some days she was just too slow to sneak her way in, too distracted by the feel of the sandstone floors under her bare feet or the way the walls felt to the palms of her hands.

Spencer was the saving of her, often. One day he found her sitting by the end of their hall studying the tassels of the ugliest rug she'd ever seen, looking down at her without a word as he noted her condition and added that to the disapproval she knew he aimed her way often. Sometimes that bothered her, how he seemed to have jumped from her happy-go-lucky childhood friend right to her mother's little helper with no in-between of them being wild together. Before they could speak, she heard her mother approaching—but in that same heartbeat of time, he was gone and she could hear his voice floating down towards her from where he'd waylaid her mother, asking if Elizabeth could please explain some current element of diplomatic upheaval in Eastern Europe to him. The footsteps receded, and she beamed and made a mental note to tell him how much she loved him.

Of course, by the time she sobered up, she'd forgotten it had ever happened, and he never mentioned it. And she never knew that the reason the staff never told Elizabeth what she was up to was that Spencer was taking advantage of every inch of goodwill he'd built with them to ask them not to. She knew about the papers he was forging for her, but never really appreciated how opposite his nature it was to write them for her, with every one of them adding to the guilt he was wearing like a second skin.

She never really understood that the reason he tried to be so grown up was that he was covering for all the ways she wasn't.

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On this night, they were having very different experiences.

Emily had lit a fire for the very first time. It wasn't anywhere where anyone would be endangered by it, nor would it destroy anything with its hungry fingers, but it was astounding to her anyway. To think that her hands had created something so fierce and real, snapping at the wood they fed it as though it would never be sated. John showed her how to make it snarl and spit, gas for the vivid flames until they were both in danger of being scorched—she loved that. Loved the heat and the small burn on her hand and the soot on his clothes. The smell of woodsmoke in his hair and the way he kissed just like the fire did, like he wanted to see her burn.

Spencer had waited for Emily to come home to attend Carnevale with him, as she'd promised. But the night was here and she wasn't—he dressed and left, shaking his head when one of the security staff asked if he'd like company. He would celebrate the festivities alone.

Emily had no interest in the distant sound of fireworks and celebrations. There was no fun to be found in the vivid nightlife of the winter festival. Instead, there was laughing as Matthew lit a sparkler and spun with it, spirals of sparks lighting up the night. There were John's hands on her hips, teasing her into a dance that set their feet tripping dangerously close to the promising flames. She was miles from Rome and miles from home and happier this way.

Spencer wasn't as alone as expected. He'd wandered with interest until finding himself in Piazza Navona surrounded by families in costumes and masks, watching the street performers and theatre shows. A magician near him was using fire to mask his illusionary sleight of hand, Spencer inching closer and watching with fascination as the man coaxed the fire into a bow and then in a bird in short succession, children clapping him on. Someone caught Spencer's arm and he turned with surprise, finding two tumblers bounding past. One paused, soft blue eyes behind her raven mask making him think of Emily, just for a moment. "Castagnole for the sweet boy," she told him in Italian, her voice older than he'd expected having seen how limberly she danced. When he thanked her and took the sweet roll she was offering, she laughed, asking him where his maschere was, to hide his pretty face. Blushing, he didn't answer, and she leapt away back into the crowd.

Emily was sure that this was the only way to live, open and bared to the world. Fire at her feet and her friends beside her, until John took her hand and led her from the fire's glow; that was the night he introduced her to a new kind of vulnerability. She wasn't sure it changed anything about her, but he seemed satisfied enough, and she guessed it would make more sense tomorrow when she'd had time to think it over, even as she sat alone afterwards and ached in more ways than one, something dark crawling deep inside her and making her very self feel shaken.

Spencer found his way to a shop selling the Carnevale masks and read each and every description carefully before finding two that were perfect, despite the hefty price tags. He wore one and carried the other, finding his way back to the dancers. Perhaps she recognised his hair or maybe she knew his walk, but his tumbler found him in the crowd and, bolstered by the mask he was using to give him the courage to be more, Spencer asked if she'd teach him to dance like she did.

And their night passed them by, both of them learning very different things through the living of it.

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They crept back through Carnevale in the midnight revelries. Fireworks lit their way, the streets lined by lights and still full despite the hour. They fit in among the revellers, a little drunk, still stoned, Emily drifting away from her friends in favour of watching jugglers tease the drunks on one street corner. She thought she could see a familiar profile among the dancers at Piazza Navona but, when she turned to call out to her friends, they'd been swallowed by the crowd. Startled and a little lost, the press of unfamiliar faces threatening to swallow her too, she stood stock still, torn between running for the person she thought she recognised and the safety of where her friends had been.

She chose her friends, turning and pushing through the crowd but finding no one there. When she turned, she still couldn't see them—just a wave of masks and vivid clothing. The traditional masks made of white faces and sharp lines frightened her, the plague doctors surrounding her looming. She tried to run from those and almost tripped, the alcohol and the drugs and her fear combining to terrify her, crying out as a sharp-beaked bird touched her arm. She whirled, and again, trying to flee and instead almost crashing through a fox-faced woman who was too drunk to help her.

By instinct, she went for safety—towards the shape she'd seen in the crowd, the one she'd recognise no matter how drunk she was, no matter how dark the world. But all she found were strangers dancing, pressing herself back against a wall and closing her eyes.

Someone took her hand, leading her from there. She was too scared to look, so she just let herself be pulled until the raucous music died down and the cold chill of stone walls around them loomed. She opened her eyes: they were inside a church, just in the doorway. The few people inside paid them no heed, and it was quiet and ethereal. She breathed, then looked to her savour and blinked to find Spencer's eyes watching her from Fiver's face.

"You found a hare mask," she said redundantly, captured by the patterns hand-stitched into the velvety-brown of the mask he wore. She reached up and traced the curl of his muzzle, the stitches for whiskers, seeing his smile under the half-mask grow. "Hi, Fiver."

"Are you okay?" he asked her, tilting his head like the rabbit he was. "You looked freaked out."

"I'm okay," she promised him. Now she was. Now she was safe. "Want to go home?"

"Absolutely," he said, but paused before leading her from there. From the bag at his hip he drew something carefully out, something wrapped lovingly in tissue paper to keep it safe. "I got you something."

She unwrapped it with hands that drifted, finding a mask within that sung of home when she touched her fingers to it. Real feathers brushed her fingers, the beak cold and sharp, the eyes cut to be a savage shape. "A raven," she whispered, staring at the spiky frame of the mask created by the feathers.

"A blackbird," he told her, beaming. "Try it on."

Despite her distaste for masks, this one, when she tried it on, felt beautiful and kind. And, masked as their childhood fantasies and hand in hand just like they'd used to be, he led her from that church and out into the night, walking her home without his grip faltering once.

It felt like moving backwards but, to Emily at least, in the most beautiful way.

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They didn't make it all the way home, but that was okay. They made it most of the way. On the expansive lawns of the villa, they lay together to watch the stars. Masks still on and Spencer reciting dreamily all the things he'd done, seen, tasted, experienced that night. Emily listened, sobering up now and a little sorry she'd missed it.

"I was supposed to go with you," she remembered suddenly with a cold rush of sobriety. "Oh gosh, Spence, I'm sorry. I completely forgot…"

"It's okay," he told her, but it wasn't—not to her. She took off her blackbird mask and held it above her to watch the stars through the eyeholes, realising that she'd forgotten him completely while he'd been finding her the perfect mask.

"It's not okay," she said, lowering the mask and holding it close. "I forgot you and you were still there when I needed you. I keep taking you for granted, and I need to stop. I'm going to do better, I promise."

He was quiet for a bit. She looked at him, suddenly realising with a jolt that he wasn't wearing his glasses—contacts? Since when? When had this happened?

"It was easier when we were kids," he said suddenly, touching his fingers to his hare-nose like he'd forgotten the mask and was instead reaching for his glasses to readjust them. "Could you imagine how excited we'd have been to be here tonight if we were seven? You'd be making up stories about Gnods and dragons…"

"And you'd be keeping a checklist of every different type of mask you saw, ready to investigate the designs and history of each and every one," she said with a laugh. "I'm surprised you weren't doing that tonight. It's not like you to miss an opportunity to learn."

"Oh, I was learning," he told her with a surety in his voice that stalled her. He sounded so calm, so confident, that she wondered what had happened to her friend in the time she'd been distracted. Maybe he'd been doing some growing too. "I'm starting to manage my shyness… your mom's been helping me. Once I had my mask on, it was easy—I could talk freely because no one could see how young and inexperienced I am, so I was free to ask them whatever I wished. I learned how to dance and to juggle and a man showed me a rope trick with the end of my shoelace and I tried possibly every kind of sweet…" He trailed off, smiling happily up at the sky as Emily watched him and wondered if maybe his night had really, in many ways, been more actual than hers.

"I had sex with John," she said.

Spencer sat up quickly, pulling his mask off and staring at her with his hazel eyes sharp on his discerning face. She cringed away from that stare, feeling a kind of shameful misery creeping in.

"Don't do that," he said, dropping his mask on the ground and shuffling forward to pull her into a hug that smelled of the paraffin the fire performers used overlaying his own familiar scent. "Don't pull away from me. I'm not angry or ashamed, I was just surprised. You surprised me."

She huddled into his hug, his arms warm and encompassing like they'd never been when they were kids. "I feel like a slut," she admitted, feeling sick even as she voiced it. "I don't think I should have done it. I don't think I wanted it to be like that, so… trivial…."

"There's nothing wrong with sex, Em," he said after a moment, like he was trying to find the words to make her feel better. "Not the act anyway, it's not… I don't know. I don't know how to approach this. You're not a—that's a horrible word, and you're not that. I guess it's not good because you regret it, but that's different to it being inherently shameful. Just because you got drunk and stoned—" She winced again, hating that he knew she on drugs: "—and did something you regret, it doesn't change your value to me or anyone who matters. You're still my Blackbird. And I'm sorry you feel bad about it. I wish it could have been happy for you."

She didn't know what to say, and so didn't say anything, just let him hold her as the night ticked on, but not quite fast enough to let the phantom hands on her fade.

"I think I can help," he said suddenly, pulling her up. "Come on."

She followed, curiously, back into the house with Spencer waving at the guards as they passed, upstairs and into his room. She took a seat on his bed and watched him curiously as he dug through his closet and emerged with a box, which he gave to her and told her to open. She did.

It was her CD player.

"Mom didn't donate it," she breathed, reaching in and finding her albums there too, each and every one of them. "You had it?"

"She asked me after she took it from you," he told her, guilt on his face. "Said she didn't feel right giving it away since it had been a partial gift from me, so I said I'd hide it until she said it was okay to give it back. But I guess she forgot, so here it is."

"Spencer…" It meant so much. Once again, she didn't know what to say—but suddenly she knew what to do. "Where's the outlet in here?"

"What? Why?"

She found one, plugging it in and digging through her punk rock albums before she found one much more suited to this. "You said you learned to dance," she said, standing and kicking her shoes off, reaching for his hand. "Well, it's Carnevale—let's dance."

He took her hand with a laugh, and they danced together on this fading night, feeling as though the ghosts of the children they'd been were dancing right there beside them, and really always would be.