The momentum of Emerald's fame had not stopped speeding along. She was receiving so many gifts, so much cash, and so much attention. She could essentially use the prison phone whenever, thanks to Mama's place comfortably in her pocket. Emerald used the phone infrequently, only occasionally catching up with Mercury and seeing how things were doing at the old apartment.

She no longer had it in her to be pissed about him throwing her in jail, now that things were going better for her than they ever were outside of the concrete complex. She also partially trusted him when he said he had a plan, however useless that had become. Plus, he had paid for Torchwick to be her lawyer. Mostly. Apparently, they had an entire charity auction selling all of her possessions still in their apartment for hefty prices that paid for the rest of Torchwick's costs, and then some (all of which he kept). Emerald remembered Mercury apologizing for the fact that she had essentially nothing waiting for her at home, to which she cackled at in response.

"Honey, the people are clearly clamouring for even a little bit of me. When I get out, I'll have enough money to buy all of that back and more."

"Good luck with that," was his terse response before the conversation died. After saying her hasty goodbyes, Emerald left to journal her thoughts about the auction as well as her agitation at Mercury's incredulous tone. Escaping to vent to her diary had become part of her nightly routine in Cook's County.

Five days after their short conversation, Emerald hadn't phoned Mercury again. She had spent her time instead playing countless rounds of poker with Sienna, Raven, and an endlessly shifting array of other women. Emerald also had countless in-prison press interviews to attend, which increased as Torchwick was finalizing a court date. Roman said that her interviews were meant to be the final publicity push to get the public ramped up for her trial, and wholly on her side.

So, when Emerald saw the flashing lights out of the corner of her eye and heard the rumbling sounds of dozens of reporters approaching down the prison entrance hall, she naturally could only presume it was for her. Torchwick had accepted many spontaneous conferences to make her answers appear 'more organic' to further the image of a shaky impoverished girl who wasn't prepared to be thrown in to such a situation.

"Well girls, looks like I gotta bounce," she smirked while tossing her cards on to the makeshift poker table. "I'll let you all keep my betting's." The girls at the table all scoffed, either playful or jealous. Emerald sauntered over to the cell bars, and tried to make her large crimson eyes appear as innocent and soft as possible.

The entourage rounded the corner of the murky jailhouse, but it wasn't just reporters tagging along behind Roman Torchwick. No, leading in front alongside the lawyer were multiple policemen, two of which dragged along a spitting, screaming woman with fiery red hair wearing very little. Actually, it was more like she was dragging the officers along. She pulled them along angrily as if she was in charge of the whole situation, practically kicking with every step she took in a violent haste. Occasionally, in response to a question yelled out by a reporter, she would simply yell: "Go to hell!"

"Who is that?" Emerald murmured. She then proceeded to nearly jump out of her skin when Neo seemed to materialize next to her. Neo only offered a questioning and judgmental quirk of her eyebrows in response before turning back to the spectacle happening outside of the bars. Roman had stopped to turn back to the reporters, the policemen and the woman in handcuffs pausing as well.

"Just wait everybody, my client will answer any questions you have soon enough," Torchwick said with a tilt of his bowler hat.

Client!? Emerald thought as she bit down on her lip. Suddenly Mama was hustling down the hallway, coming from the opposite direction of the mob.

"What's going on? Who is that?" Emerald hissed, following the warden's movements from the other side of the bars. She felt the presence of Neo following close behind, like a much shorter shadow.

"Questions!?" The red-headed woman was planted firmly in the same spot, screaming at a mix of the crowd and Torchwick.

"Carmine Esclados committing the usual, murdered partner along with the multiple people they were cheating on her with." Mama responded to Emerald's question in a distracted rush, before hurrying over to the new prisoner. "I'll show you to your suite honey, you're going to love it."

Carmine didn't take well to Mama's attempt at soothing. "Do you even know who my boss is?" She seethed. The reporters responded raucously to her sass, and their voices melted together so chaotically Emerald couldn't tell whether or not they knew the answer.

Either way, Carmine yelled back triumphantly in response. "Well, she owns all of Vacuo, so go to hell all of you!" Carmine was tugged along out of sight, with Roman Torchwick staying behind. The mass of reporters were temporarily held back. Roman turned back to the groupies, a triumphant smile stretched across his face.

"Don't worry everyone, just like I said, my client will be taking questions soon. Within the hour, in fact." Even with the object of their apparent infatuation gone, the journalists still had a frivolous desire for answers that they directed to Torchwick instead. His only response was to give them a smile that could easily be read as 'I hear and understand you,' but Emerald couldn't help but see it as a gloating exclamation of victory. She attempted to wave him over, with Neo perking up beside her. Torchwick's nose flared for a brief second when he saw them.

He marched over to them. "What is it?" He stood close to the bars, but Emerald still had to strain to hear him over the reporters still asking questions solely about Carmine. Emerald glanced over Torchwick's shoulder: none of the journalists even seemed to notice her. She wet her lips, a lump of dread knotting in her stomach and pushing bile up her throat.

"I was wondering about my trial date," Neo pressed up close to her side, nodding frantically, "or uh, we were wondering about our trial dates. What should we do while waiting for final confirmation-"

"Yeah okay kid I'm going to stop you there," Roman kept his shit-eating smile constant. "I really don't have time for this. This girl- did you hear? Who am I kidding of course you did- has big connections."

Emerald scowled, trying to hide the fact that the bundle of frantic, panicked energy in her stomach was attempting to push tears out of her eyes. Her voice was thankfully cold and steady as she said "And why should we care about the owner of some dried-up Dust mines?"

Roman scoffed. "Thinking like that sweetheart is going to keep you in the small-time." He turned around to continue warming up the crowd.

Emerald watched the lawyer's suit-clad figure melted into the excited crowd. Blood pumped loudly in her ears as she stared out into the crowd, the rushing noise provided a melodic bassline as Roman's final words repeat hastily in her brain. A frantic, looping musical number that thrummed through her body like ice-cold nausea. Emerald realized starkly that she felt like passing out.

A plan sprung into her brain.

It was hasty and insane, but desperate girls make for desperate plans. Even without all of her possessions auctioned off, she had nothing to go 'home' to. She was invisible down in that flat with barely a dollar to her name. Finally, however, she had a taste of the fame she deserved. Something she would never stand to lose. So, with inner turmoil stilled and eerily calm set into her bones, Emerald crumpled lifeless to the ground.

At the last second, she managed to flop her arm under her head so it didn't crack against the cold ground. However, sharp stings signifying the beginning of bruises still erupted across the rest of her body as she made impact with the concrete. Still, she kept her eyes closed and prevented herself from flinching.

"Emerald!" The response was immediate, although just from her fellow inmates. A shadow fell over Emerald's closed eyes, telling her at least one person stood over her. Emerald tried not to smirk when she realized the constant buzz of the reporters had quieted down.

"Mrs. Black?" A tentative voice belonging to a stranger let out. Emerald pretended to stir, groggily groping along the ground before sitting up. She blinked slowly at the small crowd around her: Emerald's poker-mates standing over her worriedly, a journalist crouching near the bars staring at her, with the small crowd stilled behind him, Neo looking completely unimpressed with Emerald's charade, and Torchwick. He stood near the crouched reporter, his head ever-so-slightly tilted as if asking Emerald whether she was being legit. Staring the lawyer down, Emerald innocently shifted her slow and precise blinks into a shy battering of her lashes.

"I'm sorry to have bothered you all, I'm fine. Really," she said meekly.

"Oh, well that's good," the reporter sighed in relief and stood up.

"I'm just-" the words were tumbling out of Emerald's mouth at lightning speed, and she repressed a smug smirk- "well I'm just more worried about the baby is all."

Roman's green eyes widened drastically, before narrowing as he broadly smirked. The journalists who were still close enough to hear stood there shocked for a minute, mouthing the word "baby" over and over as if it were part of a foreign vocabulary never heard before. Realization seemed to dawn in their eyes all at once.

"I won't stand for this, dammit!" Roman roared across the room at a set of prison guards. "My client is carrying the most precious cargo in the world and all you nitwits can do is stand there and let her injure the baby as you keep her holed with common criminals!" The guards sprang into action, likely from fear from how intense Torchwick apparently could be. However, they were not as quick as all of the journalists in the dank prison hallway. The word "baby" rolled through the crowd like ocean waves, before they all started towards the cell, pressing close to the bars. Emerald made her eyes as doe-like as possible and tilted her lips in a subtle, bashful smile when cameras began to flash.

"By the brothers, you imbeciles!" Roman shouted. "This is a pregnant woman, have some common sense!"

Mercury trudged through the streets of Atlas on the way home from work. He was careful to keep his head down as he danced around the crowds bustling through the streets. Mercury preferred not to be caught amongst moving bodies pressing in on all sides, especially in the city where chances of being blindsided by a wayward elbow and even tripped were increased. He was fine being on the edge of the crowd watching others around him.

As he trudged through slush, the wet slapping of his feet against pavement were his only indicators that his thin boots were soaked through. Over the noises of himself and the crowd, Mercury heard the shrill yell of the paperboy: a teen with a surprising amount of vocal power for someone so small. Mercury stopped to fish some money out of his pocket and listen to the boy, because otherwise the kid would be yelling out into the void of the busy Atlas streets. Mercury had spent long enough as a frail paperboy himself to know how shitty that felt.

"—pregnant! That's right folks, you heard it here, pregnant! Get your papers!" The peddler gave Mercury a small smile and a nod as the elder dropped the coins into the other's small hands. Mercury returned gesture when he was given the paper in return. "Extra, extra! Read all about it!"

Mercury stood close to the scrappy young seller as he flipped open the day's newspaper. Emerald's image was plastered over the cover, her legs folded modestly in front of her as she lounged on what look to be the ground. Her eyes were wide and smile shy, like she was just caught in a secret act. Every time he saw her in the papers a powerful, sick feeling rooted itself in his chest and raced through his limbs. It was a cocktail of guilt, fear, anger, and something somber and heavy he didn't recognize. It was Mercury's fault Emerald had gotten thrown in prison, out of a moment of sheer panic where he didn't know what else to do or risk losing her forever. But, prison seemed to bring Emerald everything she dreamed of, at cost of spending her time in the shadow of Roman Torchwick. At least, Mercury presumed all her dreams were coming true. He remembered her talk of wanting to be famous back when they lived together, but ever since he hired Torchwick he heard exceptionally little from her.

Mercury crumbled the paper in one hand and let his arms rest at his side when he realized his hands had begun to shake. He was about to continue on his way when sudden alarm bells starting ringing in his mind, causing him to freeze in his track so fast he nearly fell forward. Paper boys always quoted the front-page headline.

Mercury uncrumpled the newspaper as fast as his suddenly numb fingers would allow. The numbness, the tremors, it was all from the cold, that was what he told himself. His slate grey eyes caught the bold black words "Pregnant All Along" sprawled across the header and Mercury seemed to stop working for a second. His body went still, not a singular muscle twitching. His eyes couldn't be torn away from the headline, like staring at them could help his brain pick up traction and comprehend the words he was reading. The cold, the cold was why his entire cognitive function shutdown.

Finally Mercury managed to rip his eyes from the headline and consume the near entire article greedily, skimming and skipping paragraphs he didn't feel important. Maybe she? No. But what if? Perhaps. If so? Definitely isn't mine. The article didn't calm his thoughts or answer any of his questions, it was Emerald just putting her bullshit story of why she killed Tyrian into a new context of her finding out she was having a baby—her loving husband's baby.

Mercury felt like vomiting into a muddy snowbank, but he settled instead for ripping the newspaper in two.

Torchwick had called what was essentially an emergency press-conference. It was too important to be held in the prison, so he got his assistants to rent out a dingy hall near the prison. Barely two days after Emerald's joyous news had first spread, she was positioned on a small wooden stage, hair and makeup done immaculately, with Torchwick and Mama sitting by her side. The reporters and any civilian audience members had no chairs, instead they all milled about in front of the stage while shooting off question after question.

Emerald knew Torchwick wanted a more scheduled interview this time around instead of an improvised one held in the prison cafeteria so he could be as in control of the newly developed narrative as possible. He had given her the rundown on what to say the night before, but she didn't even think about any of the notes he had given her: she could play the role of caring and distressed mother perfectly. Call it her natural maternal instincts.

"Ms. Malachite, what is your reaction to an inmate under your care being in such a sensitive state as pregnancy?"

"Why, the idea of someone being pregnant while in jail is simply horrible," Mama began, carefully choosing her words as she went along. "The healthcare in most prison facilities isn't sufficient for a pregnant woman."

"Precisely." Roman cut in before Malachite could get in another sentence, causing him to catch a glare from the warden. "That is exactly why we've decided that Mrs. Black's court date should be scheduled for as soon as possible. A woman of her ailment shouldn't spend a single day in the slammer!" The journalists all started up again, clambering for Torchwick to elaborate on when the court case would be settled. Emerald zoned out while Torchwick soaked up the attention. When it wasn't her turn to answer a question, Emerald simply smiled somberly at her cohorts and the crowd.

As Emerald scanned the group of reporters below her, her eyes almost immediately landed on a familiar silver-haired figure. Mercury was seemingly trying to have a discussion with one of the reporters near the back of the gathering. Emerald thought she could see the word 'father' on Mercury's lips, but the reporter didn't even seem to notice her husband standing beside them. The moment the young man seemed to notice his dismissal and turn his head back to the stage, Emerald urgently dragged her eyes to another side of the room. She made a pointed effort to look anywhere but at him. A new, nagging feeling wiggled into her stomach.

Suddenly Torchwick jabbed Emerald in the ribs. She was being asked a question.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she laughed it off airily. "Pregnancy brain, you know? I just can't stop thinking about my wonderful future bundle of joy. What was the question again?"

"What does your husband think of all this?"

"Well, he's elated for the baby, obviously," Emerald smiled, hoping she didn't look stressed or insane. She didn't understand what was happening to her. "I broke the news when I spoke to him on the phone last, which was very recent." How recent? Six days? No wait, seven. "But he's also worried beyond his wits. He just wants me to come home so he knows both my baby and I are safe, and I'm sure every waking hour will be torture for him until I am in his arms." Emerald was supposed to act forlorn when answering a question like that, but the uncomfortable pain in her voice could likely pass as some deeper emotion.

The miniature press conference didn't last for much longer. Emerald was quickly surrounded by guards previously stationed at the entrances to the hall and escorted outside to the prisoner transport vehicle. She kept her gaze trained to the ground when her posse was engulfed in the crowd of audience members with their cameras flashing. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and tried to make her face shift into an expression that wasn't the sudden strange uncertainty she felt. She would still try to keep up her image for the public, surprised sightings of people from her past or no.

However, Emerald couldn't control herself when she was loaded back into the prison vehicle. She turned back to peer through the bars and made abrupt and intense eye-contact with Mercury. His dark eyes were shifting, in them held a look of somber defeat. It was one of the softest expressions she had seen from her husband, and Emerald's heart stopped. She slumped down below the barred windows so the reporters couldn't catch any potential breaking of character. Still though, one image couldn't escape her mind: Mercury, standing at the back of the crowd while the others surged forward, pushing against him as all he did was stare forward with that powerful expression. He was in his tattered winter coat. He would've usually been at work at this time, Emerald's mind whispered to itself.

Emerald rubbed her eyes, not caring about smudging her kohl. Everyone would just think she was crying like an average pregnant woman. Everyone but Torchwick. He'd sniff out any slightest doubt Emerald was having and rip her a new one before she could get the chance to ruin the plan, as if it wasn't her life on the line. That was just all the more reason to stop being concerned about anything have to do with her old life. Mercury was fine. Even if he looked so alone. So… invisible.

Emerald could perfectly imagine Mercury alone on a desolate stage. Faded, sorrowful clown makeup decorating his face. He adjusted his stance, prosthetics clacking loudly against the barren wood.

Emerald curled against the cold wall, digging her fingers into her hair. Those were the exact thoughts she didn't want. Thoughts of pity could cause her to slip up, resulting in her losing her notoriety and potentially being hung. Besides, with the fame and fortune she would receive once she busted out, she could easily repay Mercury for his trouble.

"If someone stood up in a crowd, and raised his voice up way out loud, and waved his arm and shook his leg, you'd notice him?" Mercury sounded almost bored, a mix of tired and disappointed.

She got out.

"If someone in the movie show yelled 'fire in the second row! This whole place is a powder keg!' you'd notice him," Mercury said dryly, only the ghost his usual smirk on his features.

She was no longer invisible.

"And even without clucking like a hen, everyone gets noticed now and then," Mercury was murmuring, but there was a slight melody in his voice. A soft sound shaped after the only time Emerald caught him singing: quietly, while listening to a record when he thought he was alone in the apartment. "Unless of course that personage should be: invisible, inconsequential, me."

It wasn't her fault Mercury couldn't do the same.

"Cellophane, oh mister cellophane, shoulda been my name oh mister cellophane," his singing voice was hardly a whisper, only a dead silent crowd would be able to hear him. "'Cause you can look right through me, walk right by me, and never know I'm there…"

Mercury stood still in his solitary spotlight, gazing down at the first row of seats in the empty theatre. "Suppose you was a woman, wed, and fightin' hard to earn your bread with one man for seven years, you'd notice him?"

Shit.

"A human being's made of more than air. With all that bulk," he shifted loudly on the stage again, "you're bound to see him there. Unless that human being next to you is unimpressive, undistinguished: you know who..." Mercury did a limp impression of the jazz hands Emerald once showed him how to do. "Cellophane, mister cellophane, shoulda been my name, mister cellophane. 'Cause you can look right through me, walk right by me, and never know I'm there…"

The most Emerald could do at that moment was fix her finger waves and pray Torchwick didn't notice anything off. Any issue with her eye makeup could be excused.

"I tell ya: cellophane, mister cellophane, shoulda been my name, mister cellophane. 'Cause you can look right through me, walk right by me, and never know I'm there."

Emerald nearly fell onto the prison yard when the door she was leaning on was opened suddenly. She caught herself, and noticed Torchwick standing nearby with a bemused targeted at her slipup. She avoided his gaze and slid out the truck back, landing deftly on her feet. She'd have to focus her thoughts solely on the court case the moment she entered Cook's County.

"Never even know I'm there…" The song ended as softly as it had begun, the spotlight shutting off before Mercury could even move.