Work Text:
Selina doesn't stop working. She never stops working. It becomes her obsession: keep it on. Keep it running. And maybe... maybe find a way to do more.
There are updates that can be made, analog that can be turned digital. She starts with the most fragile parts: the fuses, the delicate tangles of wire and piping in the walls. They can be remade better, sturdier, able to maintain and then some.
The basement still makes her shiver, even though she knows that for as long as the machine is running, nothing can come through to harm her. It's too far under the earth, too quiet. She wears enormous headphones, blasts her tapes so she can't hear the creaking of the house above her, or of that damn elevator.
At a certain point, even though she's basically living rent-free, the practicalities of life start to interrupt. She runs infiltrations by night, works by day, sleeps in bursts, drinks coffee and smokes and just keeps going. She posts on a few boards, finds some renters after a while, ones who lead lives similar enough to hers that they respect the need to keep secrets, and her strange rules.
Their money buys more equipment, materials, cheap food, the few things Selina needs. So she keeps working, until the machine runs so smoothly, so reliably, that she could leave if she really wanted.
She doesn't want to. And there's yet more to do.
The thing is - if she can seal away, she can bring back, can't she? She can do anything, given enough time and materials. And so she sets about building a door.
..
She works even longer, sleeps even less. The ideas seem to come to her more easily when she's like this, her mind drifting, subconscious blending with conscious in ways that would have frightened her a year ago. She was so frightened of everything a year ago. Now she can tolerate working in the basement in the quiet, just the humming of machinery to keep her company. Its sounds are as familiar as the voice of a lover, of friends. It whispers to her, urges her on, sparks ideas when she's stalling.
All that defines time is eating (quickly, cheaply, barely tasting) and sleeping (fitfully, briefly) and collecting the rent every month. She collects it six more times before the door is done. She collects it once more before she's ready to try opening it.
It's important to specify your variables, so Selina pulls up as much memory as she can. She translates a person into something a machine can understand and locate.
First, a man in clothes too formal for every occasion, button-down shirt and necktie that smells like smoke. Guilt weighing on him, but care as well: care for his friend, for his mother. Tense laughter and heavy sighs of relief.
Then, a woman in a mask, a mask made up of clothes and boots and a wig and a snarl that say 'come here' and 'stay away' in equal, baffling measure. The taste of alcohol and lipstick, and fears and regrets, and a heart too raw to be left unguarded.
Finally, another man, with soft, sad eyes and lips that left too soon. Scruff and rough denim and solid arms that picked her up and held her like it was nothing to bear the burden of her. Busy hands and a busy mind, and potential.
She spends hours on each of them, making sure every specified detail is correct, and then she makes herself wait another day. Opening this door could do anything: it could bring back what the five of them (four of them now) gave themselves to stop. It could pull her in with them. It could bring them back wrong, or it could bring them back right, which somehow frightens her even more.
Finally she gets herself nice and drunk on the stash from Abigail's room, goes down to the console in the basement and presses 'Enter'.
There's a flash of purple sky and bleached sand, so bright in the basement that Selina instinctively covers her eyes. An instant later, the light is gone again, and sitting, stunned, crumpled on the floor, are her friends, alive and staring up at her.
"Are you real?" Abby asks, and Selina laughs too loud, too high.
"You tell me," is all she can say back. She staggers towards the group and sags to her knees in front of them, and as they all move together and clutch one another, arms and faces and tears mingling in one big embrace, nothing has felt more real.
Abby is unrecognizable at first: she ditched her wig pretty early on, apparently, the heat of the wasteland too much. Her hair, it turns out, is mousy brown, with the slightest flecks of auburn in the right light. Her face is windblown and freckled, her lips chapped and torn and cracking a little when she half-smiles.
Jude looks like himself but more. He looks proud, weathered, steadfast. The first thing he does is ask for a smoke, and Selina has a near-empty pack in her back pocket. He collapses onto the floor of the basement and takes joyful puffs. His shirt is so dust-worn it looks like it was never white to begin with. Two of the buttons are gone, and the tie is somewhere in another universe.
Emmett is cold, immediately. He stares at the floor and just touches it, laying his palm against it as he shivers. Selina takes off the denim jacket she's wearing - his jacket, left strewn on the floor in the lobby nearly two years ago. She wraps it around his shoulders, and he flinches away for a moment before letting himself lean into her touch. He smells awful, but it's another tether to the reality of this.
Selina takes them up to her place, and all she has is cups of ramen and cans of Coke, but they all wolf it down like it's the best thing they've ever tasted. Jude burns his tongue trying to eat the noodles too soon, but he laughs it off and keeps going. They still have their keys in their pockets, Abby still has her (empty) flask. Selina gives the half-drunk bottle of whiskey back to her and sends the three of them on their way back to their apartments. They're still just as they were left, though dustier.
Emmett comes back to her door after only a few minutes, sheepish and holding a towel and soap.
"I don't..." he starts. "You fixed the wall back up, huh?" Selina nods. "It still feels." He stares at his boots. "Can I use your bathroom instead?"
"Yeah," Selina says quickly, "Yeah, of course, anything you need." She leads him through her apartment, and he pauses in the door of the bathroom.
"Could you... sorry, you don't have to."
"What?"
"Just sit with me? While I take a bath." He shakes his head and crouches to start untying his boots. "It's stupid, forget it."
"Hey." Selina places her hand on his forearm. Again he flinches for a moment, and she pulls back. "It's no problem."
She fills the tub for him, checking the temperature of the water carefully. Her back stays turned while he gets undressed, until he's in the water - for all the difference it makes. She leans her back against the wall next to the tub and just sits alongside him.
He looks thinner than she remembers, but more muscular. When he leans forward to scrub at his feet, there's a long scar running down his back. Was that there already, or a souvenir of the wasteland? She wouldn't know, and his skin is so burnt and windblown that it's hard to tell. Not that she's looking all that much.
"How long were we...?" he asks after a long span of silence.
"One year, nine months."
"Fuck." Emmett scrubs his hands over his face and slides his body down to dunk his hair in the water.
"Did it feel like... that long?"
"I don't know." He sits back up, smoothing his hair back. There are a few white hairs at his temples. "Hard to keep track. Didn't... want to, after a while."
"I'm sorry," Selina says softly. "I'm sorry," she repeats, voice cracking, "Sorry it took so long. I tried, I promise, I never stopped trying."
For the first time, Emmett turns to look at her and meets her gaze. He lifts a hand to touch her cheek, leaving a couple drops of water behind.
"But you did it," he says. "You..." He smiles creakily, like his face isn't used to it. "You saved us."
"Not soon enough." A couple tears leak down her cheek, joining the drops of water from his hand.
"But you did it."
Selina curls in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest.
"Anything can be done, if you can just figure out the logic," she says with a shrug.
After he's scrubbed the dust from his hair and skin, after he's rinsed off and gotten dry, Emmett stands by the door for a few moments, towel wrapped around his hips. He shifts his weight to one foot, then the other.
"I can go with you," Selina says softly. "If you need..." Emmett nods fiercely, his eyes shiny with unspilled tears. "Okay. Let's go get you dressed, yeah?"
The last time Selina was in Emmett's room, she was breaking the wall down with a sledgehammer. With some of the rent money, she hired a couple contractors to come repair it, but she never came in to check it, after. It looks good - like none of this ever happened.
"All your stuff's still here," Selina says as Emmett walks over to the rickety bureau by the window. "I didn't... I knew you'd be back."
"Thank you," Emmett murmurs. He opens the top drawer and plunges his hands into the pile of clean (if musty) socks, like he's never seen such luxury in his life. Selina sits on the edge of his bed and stares at the framed programs and pictures on the wall, while he rustles through the drawers behind her.
The bed shifts as Emmett puts his weight down carefully beside her. He smells nice now - shampoo and clean skin. He can't stop fidgeting with his fingers, rubbing the webs of his thumbs.
"Who's that?" Selina asks, looking at a photo of a woman with pale violet hair. It's a candid shot, side-lit from the window she's looking out of in a way that highlights the dark circles under her eyes. Her skin looks thin and fragile.
"A friend," Emmett says. His thumbnail digs in hard into the skin of his knuckles, picking at a barely-healed scrape. After a few moments of that, Selina puts her hand on top of his to stop him breaking the skin. His hands tense under hers, then relax.
Slowly he leans closer to Selina, until his head is on her shoulder. He breathes shakily, squeezing her hand too tight. She feels a warm tear start to drip down her shoulder, her arm.
"It's okay," Selina whispers. She tugs Emmett close, lets him curl up with his head in her lap and cry. His hair is soft under her fingers, his shoulder solid and shaking. "It's okay, you're okay. We're all okay."
"I didn't think..." Emmett says softly. "Jude kept hoping, but I." He swipes at the tears and snot running down his face. "They kept me from..." He curls in on himself. "They kept me alive."
"I'm so glad they did," Selina says. "I... missed you." Emmett turns in her lap to look up at her. He laughs hollowly.
"Missed me. You sure about that?"
"I'm sure." Selina runs her fingers lightly over Emmett's cheek. Cautiously, he reaches up to take her hand in his.
He brings her palm to his lips and presses a kiss to the center, then lays her hand across the side of his head and closes his eyes.
"You should get some rest," Selina says, starting to stir and dislodge Emmett from her lap. He grabs her hand again, squeezes.
"I'm --" he starts, then sighs. "It's just... I'm not used to being by myself anymore." He shakes his head. "But you don't have to--"
"I'll stay." The faintest trace of a smile plays across Emmett's lips. "As long as you want me to." He gives her hand another squeeze, a grateful one this time. They shift gradually, until they're lying face-to-face on either side of Emmett's bed. He smiles a little.
"Beats sleeping on a rock," he says quietly.
"Did you--"
"Only at first. We scavenged. There's... stuff there, from before. There used to be people there, a whole world. We saw a lot of it - we tried to keep moving."
As he talks, Selina feels her eyes start to burn with tears.
"I'm so sorry," she says, feeling her throat choke up. If she'd been stronger, smarter, maybe...
"Hey," Emmett says. He lays a hand to her cheek. "It's not your fault, okay? And we're back because of you." Selina nods. It doesn't feel true, but she won't fight him on it.
They sleep close together, Emmett under the blankets and Selina on top of them. She dozes more than sleeps, touching Emmett's shoulder every time she wakes up to make sure he's still real. If he isn't, he's a very convincing delusion, at least.
..
Selina sleeps in his bed again the second night. She manages to sleep for a while before she's startled by a yell, by the mattress shifting quickly. When she opens her eyes, she sees Emmett sitting at the foot of the bed, head in his hands. He's shaking.
"Hey," Selina whispers. She sits up and shifts down the bed to get closer to him. When she puts a hand on his back, he tenses in immediate fear and turns to look at her with wild eyes.
"We need to keep moving," he says. "Can't sleep in the same place twice, that makes a pattern, tracks. Bad stuff."
"Emmett, we're safe," Selina says. "We're in your apartment." He looks around, taking in the surroundings.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
"But what if this isn't--" Emmett cuts off, shaking and breathing heavily. Selina wraps her arms around him and shushes him gently.
"Come lie back down," she urges, and he follows her back up the bed to lay his head on the pillow. "We're here, Emmett. This is real."
He shakes his head, fear in his eyes. He opens his mouth to speak, then clenches his jaw shut again and takes a deep breath.
"I'm real," Selina whispers. She takes Emmett's hand and places it on her cheek. "You're real. Your pillow is real. The blankets are real." At that point, she pulls the blankets up to cover the both of them. "What else?"
"Mattress," Emmet replies. "That's real." He runs his fingers through the ends of Selina's hair where it spills across the pillow. "Your hair is real." Reaching up over his head, he taps the wall. "The wall is real."
"Good, good." Selina curls a little closer, feeling Emmett's body starting to relax. "The apartment is real," she says. "The windows... the dresser..."
"The ceiling," he continues. "The floor. The door."
They list things, their eyes drifting shut, until they're both asleep.
..
"It's been a week," Emmett says one night, at the door to his room. "I should try to sleep alone, probably."
"If that's what you want," Selina says, trying to mask the sudden clench of her heart upon hearing that.
"I just... You shouldn't have to keep taking care of me." Emmett's gaze is toward the floor, his shoulders slumped.
"What if I want to?" Selina asks. Emmett shakes his head.
"There's no reason you'd want to take care of me."
"Emmett." Selina touches his chin, tilts his head she she can look into his eyes. Slowly she leans up and presses her lips to his, just like she did one year and nine months ago, right before she lost him.
He kisses her back this time, one hand going to her waist. When they break apart, he leans his forehead against hers.
"I want to take care of you," Selina repeats. She strokes his cheek with one hand, the other resting on his shoulder. "Can you believe me? Please?"
After a few moments, a few breaths, Emmett nods slowly.
"Will you let me?" she asks, and Emmett nods again.
He leans in to kiss her, wrapping his arms around her. His lips are soft and warm, his hands less certain than they used to be. But they have time to learn that certainty again. When he pulls back, he's smiling. His face is starting to get used to it, the expression a little more natural.
"So," Selina says. "May I stay the night?"
"Please," Emmett says, pulling her close. "As long as you want."
..
There's more work to be done - always more work to be done. Sifting through the wreckage of three lives is its own task. Abigail's life here was fairly new, easily reconstructed, but there's the issue of Jude's mother, and of the people in Emmett's life who only know he moved to LA and then fell completely off the grid. For two years.
It's going to take a lot of work. A lot of lies, because the truth will never be believed. And their lives, the four of them, may never get put back together again. Not that they were in such great shape before. Perhaps it's better this way; a shift, at least.
Either way, it's something for Selina to do. By day she works on what they'll need to pull off their re-entry into the world - documents, made-up news articles, carefully crafted stories. By night she keeps Emmett close; tells him what's real, shows him what's real. In between, she does what she needs to in order to keep going.
She can do it, she can save all of them again, keep saving them. She just has to keep it running, and keep it on.