Hatchetfield and Friends

12 - Silence

Emma never thought she would make it this far. Not after everything that'd happen in her utterly  depressing life. Sure, she'd backpack to random places and smile and laugh and pretend like she was having the best time of her life, but the only time that ever really happened was when she was chugging poison and couldn't think straight. She'd never gone home with a guy, though. That was something she never let herself do, even when intoxicated. Emma backpacked and drank and avoided all of her problems and tried to abandon her trauma at some random rest stop, but she was still there. After her mom would get blackout drunk and her dad came home for the first time that month, angry that the house wasn't clean enough and that there wasn't beer in the fridge for him, she was still there. When her sister died in a terrible car accident and she had to go back to Hatchetfield and see her parents at the funeral, she was still there. Even when her parents decided they couldn't handle the pressure of people looking at them, silently questioning them, and pushed the blame of the accident on to her. Emma was still fucking standing. 

She stood her ground, got a job, enrolled in community college, and tried to make her sister proud. And then she met Paul. Paul was this light in a tunnel of darkness. She looked forward to seeing him when he came in, even when she didn't know his name then. Paul had this adorable, nervous, charming smile to him that seemed to make the constant tightness in her chest ease up just a little. Oh, but when the apocalypse hit, that was pure hell. Somehow, though, Paul was still there. Even with her sarcasm and bitterness towards the world, he still stuck with her. And she owed him her life, obviously, seeing as how he saved hers. Even if he did try to kill her sometimes. P.E.I.P made a cure and Paul was as good as new, if not a little confused and a lot guilty. 

Paul and Emma managed to get through it all together. They got a house in Colorado and a decent amount of money, which is all they really needed seeing as how Emma was starting a pot farm. Things were bumpy at first, as one would expect, but Paul opened up to her and Emma opened up to him. Paul never felt loved because his parents decided work was more important than their own child, Emma felt hated because she was the fuck up child that her parents came after whenever they had a bad day and didn't have enough money to buy their own punching bag. Paul was great at math, Emma enjoyed science. Although, she still hadn't talked to Hidgens.  She didn't even know if he was alive or not, P.E.I.P wouldn't tell her and she wasn't ready to confront that issue yet. 

"Hey Em?" Paul called from the bathroom.

Emma put down the small potted plant back onto the windowsill. "Yeah?" 

"I...I need you?" It came out a question. 

Emma hurried to the bathroom and froze when she saw the blood. It dripped down the side of Paul's head and was starting to form a tiny puddle on the tile. 

"What happened?" She exclaimed, instantly going for the cabinets under the sink to get the first aid kit and a washcloth. 

"I'm not really sure, I think I just hit my head on the corner of the medicine cabinet."

Emma sighed and ran warm water over the washcloth. "How bad does it hurt?" She motioned for him to sit down on the edge of the bathtub. 

"Not that bad," he replied, wincing as Emma applied the washcloth to his temple. 

"Mhm, mhm, I'm sure," Emma said, shaking her head and fighting off the bubble of laughter building up. 

"I mean it's not as bad as getting impaled in the leg," he shrugged, casting her a look. 

"Hey, just because I got a piece of metal shoved through my leg and was in severe pain doesn't mean that you hitting your head on the corner of the mirror medicine cabinet thing doesn't hurt," Emma scolded. "If you got shot in the leg ten times and I got my leg cut off, that doesn't mean your mangled leg doesn't hurt."