Prompt, if you're feeling it--Emsider, "I lied before"
Her home seems cold and foreboding, and inside of it sits a lunatic on her throne and her father is encased in stone. It’s not the most ideal homecoming situation. There’s an ache in her chest, one that begs for the comforts of her old life. When she was dumb and desperate for freedom and didn’t understand what it meant to be an empress.
She wants to say she doesn’t miss the old Emily, but she does. Because beyond those walls, even moreso than this journey she’s been on, everything will change.
“What will you do?” The words are a chill on the wind, the diverging of two planes of existence splitting at the seams.
Kill Delilah. Stop Delilah. Understand Delilah.
He hovers in her periphery, as black and white as his own viewpoint. “There is no time to hesitate now, little empress. But here we are.”
Despite herself, there’s a curl of her smile that threatens the edges of her mouth. “Did you come all the way here for a pep talk?”
The Outsider is quiet for a moment, and she wants to look, to take him all in before this is the end of their - partnership? But there’s a worry that sits uncomfortably in her gut that if she looks, he’ll disappear.
“That would be encouraging.”
“And you don’t get involved?” She rolls her neck and closes her eyes. For a brief second, there’s a brush against her fingers, as cold as they were in the Void when he held her dangling by her wrist.
Then it’s gone, and he takes a deep breath. “I think we’re past that by now, you and I.”
She wants him to hold her hand. And not because she wants this to end in some sort of romantic connection, but because she’s so lonely and she needs it. She needs that bit of someone in her corner, someone who has been there to push her along and show her the way. Sokolov is gone. Meagan is a lie. Her mother is a ghost in a heart. Her father nothing more than a statue.
The only bullshit, tangible connection she has right now is this twisted and warped god.
“I lied before,” she admits. This is it. A conclusion will be written, and she will take back everything that should be hers. “I told myself it didn’t matter that you were gone back at Stilton’s. That I was on my own.”
“Humans are very good at lying to themselves, I’ve noticed,” he says with a huff of amusement.
“I needed you,” Emily tells him.
Her hand finds his, tentative fingers pushing against darkness. She lets herself have this weakness, the feel of his palm against hers and the brief way his fingers tighten and squeeze before he’s gone.
There is, after all, a traitor to be rid of.