There were plenty of reasons why their world views should be starkly different. And Tommy had considered them plenty of times over the years. Mostly because he had been forced to face the fact that his sister had other opportunities in life. Ones he’d never have and ones he had simply been born without. Part of him would always struggle with a sort of guilt for taking her away from the mainland. Away from a life that would have been.. safe, sane, normal. All the things that a pirate existence simply didn’t bring. And there were times when he had questioned whether or not she could hack it as a pirate, given how utterly unwilling she was to take a life. Even to defend herself. That made for quite the dilemma when out on open seas being ready to face an attack from a naval ship.
“There’s a big difference between thinking about it, and acting on such emotions and impulses. And how you might have turned out if raised with me doesn’t really count Em. You weren’t. And part of me thanks any sea god or whatever greater power might exist for that. Because while she was certainly no saint, you were safer being where you were. And lets be real, if you’d been there I would probably have killed him years earlier, the second he managed to lay a hand on you without me being there to take the blow, his life would have been forfeit.” He said, quite harshly. But all this sudden ‘if I had been in your shoes’ talk did not make any sense. Not when taking into account her previous devastation. Her questioning how he could have done it, not believing that he hadn’t done so to protect her as well as protect himself. “I don’t know.. how is me taking our fathers life suddenly okay?” He had to ask. Hoping for an answer that would provide some clarity.
“And yet you don’t really let me in. You don’t really trust me or lean on me. When someone hurts you or fucks with you, you don’t tell me everything.. you assume I’ll just take the violent route. Other sister tell their brothers that shit.. so clearly something about how we work, isn’t really working.” He ruffled his own hair, finding this subject to be almost harder than that of their fathers demise. He’d never thought he would make a decent older brother. Never trusted himself in that role. Yet her actions were building up under those fears and that constant uncertainty. “So yeah, you wanted a brother, you say you’re happy I came to find you. But I don’t know how to stop questioning if you actually wanted, and still want, me in particular.” Tommy’s eyes were on the floor, wondering if he had, yet again, gone too far. Pushed the envelope too wide, underlined another factor that should have been left untouched. “Okay..” There did not seem to be much more to say. And he had to do his best to believe her when she said she was happy being here and had no wishes to leave. Inwardly he was secretly glad. His world wouldn’t be right side up without Emily. Hugging her back, he sighed softly against the weight of her blonde locks. “Alright, roomies it is.” Her stubbornness would have won wars in a different universe, he was sure of it. “Sure. A go for plan B.”
“I’m not saying that it’s okay, Tommy, but.. I am tired of only ever seeing the negatives in everything. I’m not happy about this situation, I’m not, but do I want to lose my brother over it? No. I have lost so much.. I can’t lose you and.. I don’t condone it, but I understand. He put you through hell and if you think that I would allow that if I’d known..” Shaking her head, Emily inhaled a sharp breath. She hated the idea of someone hurting Tommy about as much as he hated the idea of someone hurting her. “I saw one side of him and for that time, it was great, but that wasn’t him. He hurt you. You did what you had to do and I’m not saying that I’ll forget about it tomorrow, but I want to work through it, I want to move forward.”
Shaking her head, Emily knew she had to come clean, not just about the things that Tommy knew she held back from him, but everything. Looking up at him, all she could offer was a small shrug of her shoulders. “I have spent my entire life believing that no one could truly love me. No matter what they did, no one could ever love me, not really and everything that has happened has just felt like it was proof. So I kept things light, happy, so as to try and not give you an excuse to leave..” Rubbing her hands together, Emily took another deep breath. “I didn’t think you’d turn violent, but apart from my obvious lack of self assurance, I wanted to live my own life because I didn’t want to depend on anyone because it only hurt more when I lost them. The more I confided in you, the more it would hurt when, I believed, you inevitably left.”
Looking up at him, the blonde tried to smile, but her sadness was evident. “It’s nothing to do with how you’ve treated me over the years, yes, you’re overprotective but I know now that it’s because you love me but you need to understand that I don’t understand that. No one has ever really loved me and stayed, cared about me or protected me, I don’t know how to handle that.” Walking over to her couch, Emily settled onto one cushion, gently patting the one next to her. “When I first got here, I started sleeping with Sid Vause. It was casual, it was fun and gradually, we saw more and more of each other, I pretty much lived with him at one point I was there so much. I fell in love with him and he left and I was devastated. A couple of months later, he came back, told me how he couldn’t live without me, how I was everything to him, that he missed me. The night we argued on the beach, I slept with him and he left again pretty much straight after and I have never known pain like it...” Shrugging again, Emily quickly wiped away a stray tear from her cheek. “I kept it secret from you because I didn’t think you’d deal with a man like him sleeping with your sister, because I couldn’t admit my feelings to him, let alone anyone else and because I knew one day he’d leave, just like everyone else and not telling you made it easier to cope with. Now.. Now you know everything.”
