A/N: Trigger warning for this chapter - all the warnings from the start of the fic still apply, but in addition there is an implicit but clear reference to suicide in this chapter; please read carefully and skip any writing after the third '...' if you want to avoid this. There is a summary in the A/N at the end of the chapter that explains what is going on in that scene if you want an alternative.
...
Time moves slow in here. Paul knows it, thinks he might have become immune to it after all these years. Even so, it pains him to see Emma wandering around their cramped little space day after day, ricocheting from antsy to lethargic. He is always hesitant to speak without being spoken to these days, but eventually he lets his guard down for a moment, and then another moment after that.
"So you're from Hatchetfield?" He all but whispers. Emma stops her pacing and stares at him. "Dan and Donna," He rushes to explain, gesturing at the TV. "They were talking about your family..."
"Yeah, I grew up here." She laughs. "And I know you did." She remembers the news stories about a local officer worker vanishing off the face of the Earth.
"Hatchetfield born and bred." He blushes. "Never wanted to leave, not until..." His eyes fall to the ground.
"We're the same age though." Emma side-tracks, dragging them back into the past. "How come I never saw you in high school?"
"You probably went to Hatchetfield High?" Paul guesses; he's had this conversation with many people before. "I was at Sycamore."
"No sh*t!"
"Yeah, yes sh*t."
"We hated you guys!" Her eyes have lit up with some kind of half-remembered rivalry.
"We hated ourselves!" He grins, caught up in the nostalgia. "Damn, to be young, right?"
"We're not old, ya big goof." The teasing is so silly that she laughs at herself, and he joins in.
"Yeah, we've got our whole lives ahead of us right?" He's still laughing but its louder now and tinted with hysteria. "Find that special someone, settle down?"
"2.5 kids and a dog?" Emma can't help but join in. "Nah, man, I never wanted that. That was my sister's gig. She had this binder, when we were little... I swear to God she made this whole life plan, and she goddamn stuck to it! Every little bulletpoint."
"Your sister? Jane?" They'd had an interview with Jane Perkins-Houston on the news not long ago - he can see her distraught face now.
"She's the reason I'm here. I was on my way home to see her when..." Emma sinks into the chair opposite him at the table. "She has a kid, you know? My nephew. I never even met him."
"You will." Paul replies with no hesitation. In that moment, he just feels that its true. He doesn't know what he wants anymore, but he can see plain as day what Emma does, and he's sure that she'll get it. He'll do what it takes to make it happen, if he can.
"Listen, Paul..."
Six beeps cut through her voice and they both freeze, shifting back from where they've been leaning in toward one another. Whatever she'd been about to say, Paul thinks, it'll have to wait.
And then Nick storms in like a bat out of hell, bringing the stink of whiskey and a cloud of cigarette smoke with him. He is completely drunk.
"What the f*ck have you two done now?!" He screams. "The cops were at my door, you assholes, and they were nosey as all hell."
Paul's heart jumps in his chest. This is it, he thinks. Tomorrow, we'll be dead or free. But his heart sinks again when Nick grabs at Emma, starts on her and doesn't stop. He hits her again and again, even when she's slid down the wall, crumpled on the floor. He won't leave her alone; not when Paul screams, like he so rarely does these days. Not when he begs him, when he puts himself in the way and grabs at the older man's arm.
"Let's go to bed." He cries in desperation.
"No-" Emma groans, but he ignores her.
"Come on, come to bed, let's- let's have some fun, I can cheer you up, please let's just-"
He gets a slap for that himself, and it doesn't change anything. Emma is unconscious on the floor and soon Paul is too - Nick having not even bothered moving to the bed this time and instead pushing him down to the ground as he calls for Emma.
He wakes before she does and crawls to her side, moves her as gently as he can into the recovery position he vaguely remembers from a work first aid course. He thinks of Charlotte giggling as Ted maneuvered her into it, the course leader frowning at them disapprovingly. He strokes Emma's hair back out of her face and uses a wet rag to wipe at the blood all over her. He thinks of his friends and where they might be now. "Please wake up." He whispers, not quite on purpose. "Wake up, wakeupwakeup..."
...
Once, about two years in and well before Emma arrived, Paul had seen his best friend's daughter on TV. Alice's school project had won some kind of youth award, for budding artists - she'd written a poem. They didn't read it on air, but she'd been explaining it with a sincerity and raw emotion that showed in itself the quality of her writing. "I lost a friend - my dad's closest friend, actually - and I had to find a way of processing that grief. He wouldn't even acknowledge what had happened, and at the time that made me mad, but I try to understand now. It's hard to come to terms with the death of someone close to you."
Paul had cried that day - because this was finally it, someone giving up, the world telling him there was no hope. But it still hadn't felt true until he sat on the floor with Emma in his arms, praying to whatever divine entities that may be out there that she would wake up.
...
After a few hours she does, gasping and groaning. She spits blood into the toilet but seems to be breathing ok. Lying in each others arms on the sofa that evening, she turns her head to him. "Do you really think the police came?" She whispers, frowning.
"I think if they did we'd be out of here by now, one way or another."
She looks away. "Do you ever think about how we could do it?"
He knows what she means. "I tried, once. That's why we only get plastic cutlery, now."
"Yeah but, the bath maybe? We could just... go to sleep."
"Without pills? We'd wake up, wouldn't be able to hold ourselves under."
Emma sighs, rolls over to rest her head on his chest. She knows without looking there's nothing else they'd be able to use either. "I guess we'll just have to live then." She leans up, kisses him on the cheek.
"I guess so."
"Emma?"
"I wish..." She coughs weakly, eyes fluttering. "We coulda met someplace, not here, you know?"
"Me too, Em." He doesn't know where it's come from but the nickname rolls off his tongue. "Then maybe I could have told you-" He cuts himself off.
"Told me what?"
"I can't." He can only think about how vulnerable she is right now, how it'd be wrong to do this to her when she's not in her right mind.
"What do you want, Paul?" She is drifting off again, and he shifts to prop her up a little more in case she has any trouble breathing.
You, he thinks, but she's already asleep.
...
A/N: Summary for anyone who skipped the second half of the chapter: Emma and Paul briefly discuss suicide as an escape of sorts, but neither seem fully convinced and they can't figure out a way they'd be able to anyway. As they decide they'll just have to carry on, Paul almost reveals his feelings to Emma, but decides it isn't the right time.