The Weight of Debts Unpaid
Hi, I’m a terrible fandom mom and best friend, but I’m crawling out of the hell-hole work has buried me in to toss this very late birthday present into the wild, wild world.
So, my lovely @catsafarithewriter, I promised Emara AU, my favorite creation of yours besides the lovely face you maintain (and everything else you’ve written), and by god was I going to give you Emara AU
A few months late.
You can expect your Christmas present on Valentine’s Day XD
Threw in my own theories and slight headcanons, but I’m still excited for when we get the official version of the AU. You know I’ll be screaming and cheering from the stands XD
Let us begin!
He was heavy in her arms.
Not a surprise when his body is half wood and all dead weight. She’s feeling it in her legs as well, the feeling of something viciously sucking at her soul, but really, she’s done this well without legs. Who needs them with arms like these?
He’s still heavy.
The hallways stretch for miles, barely different from one to the next. Swathed in red and carrying the heavy pinging blare of alarms miles ahead of where they started. She doesn’t feel like she’s made any difference running through these halls, finding no relief, no sanctuary, just a million different eyes and guns trained on her limping form.
He’s so god damn heavy.
There’s a door cracked open from fleeing cats who couldn’t be bothered to follow evacuation protocol. She crashes into it and through it, pulling it full shut until the locking mechanism clicked louder than the alarms.
Silence reigned in the small room, the alarms cut off mid dutiful shriek, but the world remained red, flashing through the unnecessary window watching the hallway.
She sets him down as gently as she can spare, sinking a bit more harshly onto her knees before him. He’s still lifeless, torn between two wholes until they couldn’t even form a half. Skin, fur, and wood melted and warred together, fighting for the right to be called “horror”.
In theory, she knew this was what Macavity had planned. Pushing, pulling, twisting, breaking in the name of thoughtless science. Experimenting until every idle curiosity had been fulfilled. Seeing the product of such twisted ideas made her stomach recoil.
His chest rose in sections, eyes startling real glass, and all the rest of him was the exact shade of wrong she wanted to believe the real one was gone, and this was just a fake. She could maybe walk out of here, leaving behind all of this, this world, this fake doll, and go see her real one-.
He is real. He is her real one.
She wasn’t going to abandon him. Not again.
She raised a hand, pressing them against his “scarred” lips, sinking the tips past the teeth and opens his mouth wide. She spares a second for the squeamish and violating feeling, then pulls out the bottle she’d managed to save from the chaos known as Macavity.
She steals a swig of the formula before making his wooden throat choke the rest of it. Her taste gives her enough energy to unlock her legs from their crouch, falling back against the opposite wall. As fast as it came, it tore through her system and flare uselessly out her damaged, mechanical right knee.
For him, it started slow. Chest rising together section by section until it was a whole, left hand shuddering to replace the claws, the right side of his chin shifting between furry and flesh. His chest became more hurried as magic revitalized itself, fireworks beneath his skin until burning out his eyes, green and blue and yellow.
He hacked the formula onto her lap, the blue liquid hitting her legs and sparking up into her chest. She grunted, knee jerking as the black hole was fed, and as quickly as they hit her system, the flared out again, unable to hold much of a charge.
At least the blue left no stain on her clothes. No clean up necessary, mind-numbing sparks guaranteed or your money back. Legs sold separately.
The process of watching him shift, cat, man, wood, was enough of a show she felt an odd motion sickness surge in her gut. Drenched in guilt and expired Creation juice, but she’d really prefer to blame everything on the flashing red lights, cutting streaks across his face like prison bars.
He got his glare back before his words, though she could read “I will eviscerate you” through the context clues. She had told herself a million things as she stalked through the building towards the highest level lab they locked him in.
That she was righting a wrong. That she’d get revenge against the ones who took both sets of legs. That she was helping a friend.
That he wouldn’t be heavy in her arms.
She doesn’t know what to tell herself now. Not when he’s fully back and glaring at her. She never knew the weight of his glare felt like until now.
“Why?” he hisses out, eyes slit in the human face he fluctuates to. His question is followed by a cough, wheeze, and the cat form fully takes over, the human disguise melting away. Less magic being used now that he’s in his more natural state, doing a terribly accurate impression of a badly animated doll. He looks as terrible as she feels, though she’s sure his slightly wrinkled suit would have some words to exchange with her torn and dirty jeans and shirt.
Her heart constricts.
Why indeed.
She's prepared herself for all scenarios. This one scared her the most. She hadn’t the faintest clue for why she did any of this. Maybe because their partnership wasn’t “just a job” anymore? Maybe because of the way he kissed her hand during tea? Maybe because, despite knowing intimately well the soulless depravity, seeing the results up close had been the final straw?
“Why not?” she supplies, going for nonchalant and falling somewhere between robot and blubbering. The answer isn’t an answer, the exact opposite of an answer, a nonanswer that left both of them dissatisfied and hurt.
But was there really any better one to give?
She sold him out. Let him be experimented on and drained of his magic- his very essence, the equivalent of a soul and blood pumping through your veins- until he was catatonic.
His glare doesn’t drop, and a childish impulse tells her to return it. She didn’t want to be an adult when the he, the world, and all the little regrets were being unfair to her. She knows she fucked up. She gave up her partner, her friend, her confusing source of feelings she did not need to identify right now, for…
Hunks of cogs. Scrap metal. Parasites made of the equivalent of an atomic bomb and lighter fluid sucking at whatever scraps of magic a human could contain. All loving connected to the ends of her thighs and twice as shiny.
She focused too hard on distracting herself, a tear slipping through her “brave” facade. She saw him shift, out of the corner of her eye, from murderous to agonizingly sympathetic.
“Haru…” he begins cautiously, eyeing her legs, “Why haven’t you moved your legs?”
“I didn’t want to do it,” she blurts out, instead of answering, “Turning you in. I didn’t even really want to do the whole “Demeter” thing, but hey, who can say no to Macavity?”
She laughs. He doesn’t. She wishes she hadn’t.
“I knew if I turned myself in, let Macavity know I wasn’t going to do this anymore… He’d just send someone else. Someone not me. And where would I be? Locked in a room with no way to get out.”
She takes in a shuddering breath, “No way to rescue you.”
There’s more life to his appearance, more flesh than bark, but he’s just as stoic as when she began. She sits before him, waiting for something to snake across his face so she can get a read, an idea. But nothing. Green eyes, still faintly glowing, remained fixed on lead, and cogs, and betrayal, and a haphazard reason she could barely stand on.
Hardy har har.
“Okay.”
That’s it?
“That’s it,” he echoes back, just as she realizes she’d said the thought out loud.
“But-” she sputters, attempting to lurch up before remembering her body had taken a democratic vote to be everything but useful and complying, “After every- How could you- Do you have- Do you not realize what betrayal is, Humbert?!”
They both paused at the sound of his name, a moment of red light flashing between that’d been all but forgotten. She wonders, dimly, and not for the first or last time, if that was his real name or one he’d picked up over the years.
“You’ve saved my life countless times, Haru, as yourself and as my partner, Demeter. The betrayal was unexpected, and it hurt, but…”
He looks at her, made up of hope and magic, and she realizes how badly she’d read the moments leading here. How easily fear can come across as anger, confusion as hurt.
Oh.
‘Do you trust me?’
Didn’t know the play, but still willing to play the part.
“I think, Haru, I can afford to put a little trust in you.”
Well, now she’s a goddamn fool.
“Humbert,” she chokes out between tears, “I liked you better when you were emotionally constipated. I can’t handle this emotional rollercoaster.”
The laughter bubbles up unwillingly, shared between the two for a second as the whole situation registered into their minds. For a moment, though, she could almost believe they were just back at the tea shop.
If only the “red alert” alarm could be so kind.
The shrieking beeping stops, the flashing red light pinging on and glowing ominously steady.
Lockdown.
“Shit.”
“We’re trapped, aren’t we?”
“Lesson learned, heart-to-hearts saved for after great escapes.”
“With the state your legs are in, we can’t make it much farther, can we?”
Right, those appendages.
They’re busted from the 9th Hell and back, and can’t hold on to much of a charge. At least not the fake magic solutions usually put into the machine. She knows she can’t move. She knows she can’t stay.
She knows she’s too valuable to kill.
“Baron, you need to-!”
She feels a surge starting in her calves where he’d dug his fingers into the grinding gears, frozen lightning blazing through her veins. It shifts, feels like leaves stretching to sunlight, water running through roots, worms churning in the earth, and she’s back.
The light fades, but her legs click before whirring back to life, lowly humming with an abundance of energy. She catches her breath and watches the mirage of flesh melts away until he’s back to the animated wood form that tells her he’s barely got any magic running through him.
He gave her as much as he could.
She’s furious he gave her so much.
She can’t deny that having her legs devour something other than her own energy isn’t a nice feeling, though. She tests it, bends a knee, and watches it move like magic and machine and a normal human limb. It’s foreign and familiar and she wishes it was neither.
Humbert presses against the door, glancing down each end of the hallway through the window.
“We better get moving. I’m not letting either of us get left behind.”
He offers her a hand to stand up, one of many. But this feels different.
Her legs are heavy on her body.
The magic Humbert poured into her is nothing but crumbs for a black hole.
There’s still a dozen more floors before they’re even close to ground level.
She’s pretty sure her foot isn’t supposed to feel itchy.
“Ready, Haru?” he asks.
Well, they’ve had worse days.
Her hand clasps his.
“Ready.”