Arc F1.10 | Chapter 9: Stupid Shirts

Emilia could see it now, the intelligence that was tucked away inside of little Xavier. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen it at the time, of course; rather, it had been a retroactive thing, a dozen little things the boy had done while she waited for the perfect moment to strike only cataloguing within her mind after he was safe in her arms.

Even without having been pulled into her younger self’s mind to watch her mind shift through thoughts and morbid jokes—things she and Xavier had indeed eventually joked about, young-adult Xavier trying on Ivirium’s post-Alliance Ridge dark humour and finding that, sometimes, there was something cathartic in laughing about things that were in no way funny—Emilia would have known exactly what she was thinking every second of this rescue mission.

This was one of the moments she relived over and over again, wondering if she could have done anything different—could have shifted the tides of their battle just enough to be absolutely sure Prex was dead. There was a good chance she would never know, and as much as Xavier had always insisted he knew the man was dead…

Maybe he was. Maybe Xavier’s feeling was correct. Really, when she was out of there, she wanted to ask the little boy about it a bit. When he’d been young, insisting barely more than a day from now that Prex was dead and he knew it, he knew it, he knew it, no one had really wanted to poke around and ask how he knew it. A dream? An instinct? A vision from the aether? Few of them would have believed the truth of the boy’s words, had he insisted it was a vision from the aether, but now… it was, wasn’t it?

That vision he had been thinking back on—and oh, how Emilia wished she’d been able to see the vision itself, rather than the little boy’s recollection of it—had been a vision from the aether, hadn’t it? Days from now, would he be given a vision confirming that Prex had been killed by those men? Perhaps by a man her younger self might be meeting herself, in a few days time—a man who would change her life in a way that she would never be capable of fully describing.

Something terrifying.

Something wonderful.

Something Ivor would never know about, attempts to find him years from now falling flat—nearly ending in her and Halen’s deaths.

What a strange thing, if Ivor had been one of the men responsible for killing Prex. There was no way to confirm it until she woke, of course—not unless Xavier’s fuzzy imagination became clearer. Emilia had been able to see the resemblance within what Xavier’s mind conjured up of the vision, however—had been able to see the attractive man she’d spent barely an hour with and never seen again.

“Is something wrong?” Ivor would ask her, several days from now, and yes, something had been wrong and not wrong, all at once. When Emilia had looked up, peering over the glass of alcohol she hadn’t touched since ordering it, wanting to erase what had happened with the blur of intoxication but also simply wanting to erase the awkwardness from her skin with human connection, she had been glad she hadn't drunk anything yet.

Ivor had been beautiful, with his soft-grey eyes and hair—not silver like hers, but something softer, stranger. Barely an hour later, she had helped him escape guards who were looking for him, his fingers brushing over her jaw as he pulled her in for one last kiss.

“I had fun with you, Emmie,” the man had whispered, before vanishing with another silverstrain, one of the woman’s arms half missing, dozens of scars littering what skin Emilia had been able to see under the empty purple eyes she had struggled to tear her gaze from, a question falling off Ivor’s lips: “Where’s Con?”

Con. Con. Conrad.

It wasn’t Conrad’s real name, she knew, but there had always been something funny within the man’s introduction and the nickname he had allowed Darrian to use for him—some implication that ‘Con’ wasn’t entirely made up, but instead, part of his real name. It could be nothing but a coincidence—as her Censor had confirmed for her back in the real world, ‘Con’ was a part of hundreds of names found throughout the continent. Conrad was by no means the only ‘Con’ in the world, and yet.

And yet, Xavier’s mind had also imagined a small, black-skinned man killing Prex.

And yet, Conrad was nearby, looking for Lux. It could be nothing, but… but Conrad had been able to feel her panic when racing towards Xavier. They were connected—had apparently been connected for a long time, and had she not had so much to pay attention to, Emilia might have spent more time thinking about moments in her own life when she might have felt her friend’s emotions in return.

A few incidents stood out to her, the most notable of which were over the course of this trip. They were muted, but they were there, especially the first one—the one that she would feel tomorrow, only hours from when she’d get a message from Mikhail, telling her Xavier was convinced Prex was dead and Porsq was insisting that, at least within Xavier’s mind, it was true.

“There’s no point in trying to tell him he’s wrong,” Finn had said, the only one of them with any real, concrete knowledge of what it was like to be molested as such a young child. Porsq knew a bit, of course, but had been older than Xavier, and while she herself had a million small moments of knowing an adult in her presence wanted to hurt her, she had usually known they would never be allowed so close. “I think it’s better to let him go on believing it, if it makes him feel safer. All the clones are already keeping an eye out for Prex. If they see anyone matching his description, or if we catch wind of someone kidnapping kids in another city or nation, we’ll deal with telling Xavier he might be mistaken. For all we know, Prex died in Emmie’s attack, however, and I can’t see anything good coming from telling Xavier he has no way of knowing if the fucker is dead.”

“Really, it’s more likely he is dead,” Baylor had later said, after winding up with the unfortunate job of sitting in an Inner Court library and scouring over maps with another of Yujao’s maybe-consensual, maybe-forced allies, all so they could figure out where Prex might have ended up after being washed down through the sewers. “Like, could he have survived the ride? Maybe? Especially if our suspicions about the break in the sewer line are correct, but, like…”

A collection of suggestions for where the man could have come out after he vanished had slotted into the relay, and Emilia could still see the maps, ancient and inaccurate but indicating what Zavriel’s own mind and thoughts had confirmed: the subterranean rivers often came up in the Xarnxiar—near the Zarlarson, where Ivor was from.

The idea that Conrad might have followed something towards Prex, then felt such disgusted glee when killing him that she would feel a settling within her soul? It seemed insane, and yet…

Shaking herself, Emilia focused back on the scene before her and the details she hadn’t been able to fully see way back then. There was Xavier, adorable and pretending to be terrified of Prex. The little boy was scared, of course, but he was also so brave and so smart. At the time, she had simply thought her presence had finally allowed him to relax, that relaxation leaving the tears to flow. It hadn’t taken long for her to realize he was faking it, pulling Prex’s attention to him, all so she could have the perfect opening to attack him.

It was unfortunate that Prex’s irregular deviation was a nuisance.

“Finally afraid. Finally. Finally. Finally,” Prex laughed, his aggravation with Xavier slipping away as his body loosened and harden and gross. Seriously.

Emilia had heard a few people say things along the lines of, “Well, at least he didn’t actually get to touch you,” to Xavier, but hearing all the things the fucker wanted to do to him was traumatizing, as was seeing how aroused the guy was. People didn’t seem to realize that words and arousal were weapons; that Prex groping himself and smiling down at Xavier were horrific all on their own. No one deserved for their pain to be brushed away with a “well, at least…” no matter how minor the thing they’d gone through was. In Xavier’s case, it wasn’t even something minor; rather, it was simply something people had normalized brushing aside because while Xavier was experiencing the most horrible version of these things, many children experienced similar things.

An unwanted hand slipping over their thigh but never touching more. Eyes skimming over them and knowing that the looker was stripping them down. Smiles that held a hint of something malevolent within them. Overheard conversations that weren’t appropriate for children. Accidental nudity that was in no way accidental.

It was normal, but of course it wasn’t. It was nothing to be bothered by, but of course it was. It was just easier to think of it as something not worth thinking about, the reality of that normalization reaching out until too many things were normalized.

When she’d been about eight, Malcolm had demanded she take off a shirt she’d recently been given by Janie, who had decided she didn’t like the texture of it. The eldest Laprise brother had stripped her of the shirt—with her permission, of course—and tugged her into his own oversized sweater—which she still had, tucked away in one of her sweater stashes—and proceeded to burn the shirt, but not before explaining why the shirt was bad: the front of it was meant to be touched.

Even in the hour she’d been wearing it, Emilia had run her fingers over the animal that decorated the front numerous times. There had been a fuzzy tail; little bubbles of water-filled plastic; a glittering, smooth sun; sequins to flip over again and again. Indigo had flipped over the sequins a few times, and it was her sister, so touching was fine, but even back then, Emilia had been able to see what Malcolm was saying: it was a shirt meant to be touched and played with, and everyone would want to play with it.

“You get to choose when people touch you,” Malcolm had explained, tucking her into his lap as they watched the shirt burn, the older boy so much the big brother she had never had. “Clothes like that… Yes, you can choose to actively ask people to play with it, or they can ask and wait for you to say yes, but people will touch it with or without your permission. Then, they might make you feel bad for not wanting them to touch.”

“It’s a shirt meant to be touched. Why wear it, if you don’t want people to touch it?” Emilia had replied, guessing at the sorts of things people would say, curling further into Malcolm and knowing he would keep her safe, no matter what.

“Yes,” he had breathed out, his arms tightening and tightening until it had felt as though her were liable to crack his chest open and consume her, the same way Olivier had said he wanted to pull Porsq inside himself, all so she could be that little bit safer. “Never let anyone claim something you are doing or wearing is an invitation in and of itself. Only your brain and mouth can ever say yes, you understand?”

They’d had the conversation before, of course. Malcolm had always been good at telling her the reality of what to expect from people who would treat her differently, due to her silverstrain. Her parents had told her a bit as well, but Malcolm was the one who had been there when she’d told Finn what things she’d already seen and experienced from adults, when she had asked him to share his story with her in return. Hence, Malcolm had known she already knew how horrible people could be and hadn’t been afraid to tell her things honestly. It would have been better if he didn’t have to, but he did, and Emilia would be forever grateful to him—to her friend, who had stepped into the role of being her older brother so easily and had made space to have so many of those hard conversations with her.

Later—less than half-an-hour from now—Emilia would put what she had learned from Malcolm to use in her first conversations with Xavier about dealing with what had happened to him. They would never be perfect conversations—things revolving around trauma and the horror of life never would be smooth or without error—but she would try, and generally, Emilia thought she’d done a pretty good job. So many kids had sat with her for these awful, gut-wrenching and impossibly unfair conversations, emerging with more knowledge of all the ways trauma could work and confidence in the fact that, no matter what, they were perfect. Sometimes, that feeling of being perfect slipped under the trauma, but eventually, when the kids emerged from the darkness, they would once again know they were perfect and that healing wasn’t a straight path, nor a set trail to follow.

More importantly, Emilia had been sure the children always knew that, from her at least, they had all the support and freedom they could ever need and want.

It was hard, and sometimes, she messed up. At the same time, Emilia knew that she’d done infinitely better than some of the other adults who had wound up responsible for the kids she’d snatched up over the years. It wasn’t that she regretted the fact that a few of those adults had been involved in the kids’ upbringing—she loved all the kids, and while there were certainly things she wished had never happened, at the same time, it weren’t as though she wished any of them were different, perfect little things that they were, despite the pain that existed within several—but sometimes…

Sometimes, Emilia thought that, maybe, she would have been better off raising a few of them herself, especially considering how things ended up.