Disclaimer: LMM owns all of these delightful characters, unless you don't recognize them, obviously – in that case they are mine.
A/N: I don't have an LMM beta yet, but I've tried not to have any glaring historical / literary inaccuracies. Feel free to point them out if you see them ;) – all comments & criticism welcome.
Chapter 2. Old News
Emily was washing the dishes when the knock came at the door. Little Ilse was sitting at the nearby kitchen table, drawing strange, wild imaginings with a stick of charcoal. She was a sweet child: she drew so many pictures and always gave them to Aunt Elizabeth, toddling into the darkened corner room where her elderly great-great-aunt spent her lonesome days. Sweet, dutiful, artistic, just like her father. But she shared a streak of rebelliousness with her namesake: she called herself a "surrealist" and kept the Andre Breton Manifesto on her nighttable, although the words were too big for her to fully understand.
Wiping her hands on the front of her slacks, Emily said, "Ilse, clear up that table, please, we may have unexpected company."
"True artists don't need to put away their stuff just because there's company," Ilse said disdainfully. "Besides, it's probably just Perry again."
Emily laughed. "I bow to the superiority of your genius, as usual." That girl had the funniest little airs.
"Who is that?" came Elizabeth's voice. Her bedroom was right next to the front door, as she liked to know everything that was happening in the house.
"I don't know, we aren't expecting anyone," Emily answered as she pulled open the door. "Probably Perry Mi—"
The drawn, weathered face at the door was as unfamiliar as a stranger's, yet a deep recognition hit her physically in the gut. She froze for a full second, staring at him, taking in the slight slant of the shoulder, the emerald green of the eyes. Then she simply stepped over the threshold and hugged him.
His body was thin, bony, in her arms. He was too tense with shock and reserve to hug her back, but she didn't care; she held him hard. Only after a long moment, when she was sure she wouldn't cry, did she release him.
"Emily," he breathed, still shocked.
She smiled shakily. "I missed you so much." He had no idea how much.
"Yeah."
"Well… Come in, please."
Ilse looked up from her sketch as they passed through the kitchen and examined Dean with great interest. "Are you Dean Priest?" she asked.
Emily felt Dean's green eyes turn towards her with curiosity. "I suppose your mother told you a lot of terrible stories about me," he joked with Ilse.
"No," Ilse said. "The kids at school talk about you. They say you went to Africa and lived in a village in the Congo."
Dean laughed. "No, that's one place I haven't been, yet."
"So… where have you been?" Emily asked in a low voice as she brought him to the living room. "By the way, can I get you some tea?"
"Around," he said shortly. "And I'm fine, thanks. Don't trouble yourself."
They sat down, he on the couch, she on a chair. The center table held a magazine issue whose cover was done by Theodore Kent – not to show off, as this type of thing was normally kept on the bookshelf, but because Ilse often took her father's artwork out to look at it. Emily wished she could hide it, before Dean saw.
"You haven't written much," she said.
"I haven't had much to say." He looked around. "I'm glad you're still here. I didn't want the house to be disappointed."
"I'm afraid it is anyway."
She stood up and sat next to him, avoiding an explanation of her last comment, though his dark eyes were questioning. It felt unnatural, somehow, to be so far apart. But she couldn't think of anything to say.
"I was in America," he said. "New York City. I saw a man murdered from across the street. Right out in the open."
Emily gasped. "Dean, I'm sorry. That's horrifying."
"That's why I needed to see you," he said. "To reassure myself that there was something good in the world, too."
His eyes were clear and honest as they met hers. There was deep friendship contained in them, but she didn't have the courage to analyze whatever lay behind that. "I'm glad you came," she said.
Dean's eyes alit on the center table. A sudden urge to swear mentally came over Emily, but she sternly resisted. "Ah," he said, lifting the magazine, and she braced herself for one of Dean's subtly snide remarks. "Whenever I see those violet eyes in a portrait, I know who the artist was."
After regarding the eyes for half a minute, he put down the magazine. "And is Teddy around?"
"It's Ted now. And… no. He's not here today. I'm sorry."
"I'll recover."
"We don't live together," Emily said in a rush.
He kept his face straight: no gloating. For this Emily could almost hug him again; she'd been so afraid he would rejoice to hear the sad story of her failed marriage. "Divorced?"
"Just separated," Emily said.
"How long?"
"Six years." She fingered the tattered edges of the old magazine. "He doesn't use my face in pictures anymore. He doesn't even paint that much." It was why they had had to leave each other. He had lost something – lost that need for the rainbow gold – gradually, reasonlessly sinking into a restless, miserable impotence. And as Emily kept writing, kept chasing her flash, he'd grown jealous. Like his mother, he made Emily into the idol and center of his life, and soon the ugliness of that dynamic had been too much for either of them to bear.
"How old is your daughter?"
"A very precocious thirteen." Emily looked up at Dean. "She's almost all I have."
"What about Ilse Burnley? Perry Miller?"
"Perry still comes around sometimes. But Ilse—" She choked. After two years, it was still difficult to speak of her old friend. "Ilse is dead."
November 4, 2003
A/N: OK, I'm officially the kind of author I hate, leaving unfinished stories up without explaining whether or not I'll finish. Well, I'm still working on this. ER stole all my inspiration for awhile there, but now that TIIC at NBC are quite literally killing off my inspiration, I am planning a return to my violet-eyed namesake.
If you want something new to read, chapter 2 was slightly revised early last month.