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White Rose	By : CeeCee Category: X-men Comics > FemSlash - Female/Female Views: 10605 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men fandom. Marvel Entertainment owns these characters. I make no money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Summary: Emma approaches the Beast, keeping her father’s dreadful promise.
Author’s Note: I know. I’m neglecting my LoMy stories, but I’m having fun imagining this one unfolding in my head, and it won’t let me go.
They would have been ruined, Winston explained to her. He scarcely looked at Emma as he told her his account. His watery blue eyes stared down into his teacup, and his hands shook.
“She threatened to ruin our crops. She isn’t human. She speaks with a woman’s voice, with one’s words, but that’s where the likeness stops.”
“She flies,” Emma murmured in wonder. “Is she really so gruesome?”
“I won’t be able to get that face from my dreams,” Winston admitted, but then he stopped short, realizing that he was stoking his daughter’s fears. But Emma pleaded for him to go on.
“The creature lives in a castle?”
“It’s enormous, but dark and lonely.”
“Perhaps it won’t be, with another person in it,” Emma told him dryly. She sighed and drank the rest of her tea. “There’s no help for it, then. I need to go.”
“Emma!” her father sputtered. “Just like that?”
“Dragging my feet won’t stop the rain, Father.” Her lack of the use of “Papa” with him chastened him, but he followed her to the kitchen as she swept up their teacups and dunked them into the washtub. She moved briskly, tidying up the tables, covering the bread basket with a towel and sweeping up crumbs. Her movements were methodical and well-practiced and her demeanor was serene. Maintaining her nightly routine was calming.
It helped nothing. Her stomach fluttered and churned with anxiety. She was being sent away. Emma listened to her sisters upstairs, laughing and arguing over the gifts that her father brought back. Christian had retired early, and Emma worried about him, but she knew it would destroy her brother if their father found about his attack.
Her brother’s memories still burned in her mind, stirring her from her reverie.
Christian! She needed to tell him goodbye! Emma felt an ugly chill swamp her at the thought of losing contact with her brother. “Father?” Emma murmured as she washed the dishes.
“Yes, darling?”
“Did… did your host say when it would be okay for me to come back?” Winston was silent, and she felt him shrink back from her elbow. Emma turned to face him and felt slightly sick when she saw him pale.
“She didn’t.”
“She didn’t say when?”
“She didn’t say it was okay.”
“Oh. All right, then.” Emma’s chin quivered, but she turned away before her father could see it. She finished the chores quickly and left her father to his evening pipe. She didn’t even give the bitter thought that he was able to afford his precious tobacco now its full head.
Emma read for an hour, savoring her novel as though it were her last. When she crept upstairs, her sisters’ low snores drifted to her ears. She dressed herself in a warm nightgown and left her stockings on her feet, since the floor boards were drafty. She headed for Christian’s room and cracked it open mere centimeters to look in on him.
In the light of her lantern, she saw his huge blue eyes in the dark, awake and anguished. “Chris,” she whispered, and she let herself in, closing the door before she ran to him. He didn’t reject her, and she heard his harsh, shuddering breath as her arms coiled around his neck. Christian breathed in the sweet scent of her hair and clung to her. “I’m sorry,” she told him.
“You didn’t do it. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m sorry I intruded. It was wrong, but Christian, I couldn’t help it. I had to know what was wrong and how you got hurt.”
“You were always such a nosy little brat,” Christian muttered, and his voice was muffled by tears.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“What? Emma, what on earth are you going on about?” He pulled back from her and gripped her shoulders instead. Her face was full of regret.
“Father is sending me away.”
“No! He can’t!”
“Yes, he can. It’s his right. I need to do it to help him, Chris. A lot depends on it.”
“Is he marrying you off? Or something worse?” He looked horrified at the thought. “I won’t let him use you to-“
“No!” she whispered sharply. “He’ll hear you. You’ll wake everyone up. You have to understand, it’s not like that. This is bigger than me, Chris.”
“Of all the people he could send away, Emma, why you?”
Why, indeed. Emma felt slightly bitter but gave him a cavalier smile, shrugging. “Why not me, I guess. I’m a loose end, Christian. Cordelia and Adrienne are the eldest. He can marry them off. That’s what you do with your oldest daughters. I was never one for the thought of marriage, anyway.”
“Not for conventional marriage,” he clarified. His mouth was mulish, and he gave her a little shake. “What does Father plan to do with you? Is he selling you?” Emma looked appalled.
“No!”
“Emma… he came home with more gifts than you can shake a stick at. Money. Jewels. Silks. This is after years of the lot of us living like paupers, and suddenly, you come to me and tell me that you have to leave me.” A rush of tingles ran over Emma’s flesh, and her cheeks flamed with shame. She looked down at her hands. “Look at me. Tell me it isn’t true.”
“Don’t say that!” she pleaded sharply. “He’s doing the only thing he can do! You don’t understand!”
“You’re right! I DON’T understand why you’re agreeing to this, and why you have to leave to… Lord only knows what. Emma, if he’s whoring you out to be someone’s mistress, so help me, I’ll kill him.” Christian’s blue eyes flashed. Emma scowled.
“Chris, I’m only telling you this so you won’t feel that I deserted you.” Christian’s face fell.
“You are,” he muttered, and he let go of her with a little shove.
“Don’t make me feel sorry I came in here,” Emma snapped.
“He brings you some trinkets, and you’re leaving because you feel guilty, as though you have to do your duty!”
“It’s not out of guilt!”
But he was right.
Winston had trespassed in a demon’s garden on her behalf, to bring her a silly gift that would wither and die. And to pay for that crime, the beast would take from Winston something that it considered equal in value.
“I leave tomorrow, before sundown,” Emma informed him crisply. She began to rise from the edge of his bed, but Christian grabbed her wrist.
“Don’t. There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t. And I won’t trouble anyone else with trying to come up with an alternative. It will only make me feel worse. I love you. But I need you to do something for me.”
“Name it.”
“Let me in.”
“What?”
“Let me inside.” She touched his temple. “I only saw a brief impression, Chris. Let me have the rest of it.”
“Emma! Are you daft? No. I won’t let you see that! It’s horrid! It was foul! I… I’m foul!”
“I need to see their faces, darling.”
“No,” he told her firmly.
“Christian, whoever did that could do it again to someone else. If it had been me-“
“Don’t! Don’t even say that,” he told her in clipped tones. His mouth was a thin, hard line, and his grip on her arms began to hurt. Emma wouldn’t back down.
“I won’t stop nagging you until you tell me. Or show me.”
“It hurts,” he grated out, and his voice wavered.
“Then let me take it away from you for a while.” Emma reached up and laid her palm against his feverish cheek, and he leaned into the caress. His eyes glistened, but he wouldn’t allow the tears to fall. “Close your eyes, brother.” He obeyed, and Christian felt her bypass the barriers within his mind, one by one, until she appropriated it, melding his essence with her own.
Once again, Emma saw things through Christian’s eyes. She didn’t linger long as the memories played themselves out before her, some pleasant, some naughty. Some of the impressions were tactile, like the feel of a terrier’s fur ruffling and sifting through his long, slender fingers; the taste of their mother’s corned beef brisket and buttered potatoes, something they hadn’t enjoyed in several years; the fizzy sensations in his stomach the first time he stole a kiss from a girl, and later, a boy, an event that cemented his preferences; the acknowledgment that his father thought that he was too soft.
She saw the forms materialize around her quickly, seeing the brick outer walls of the Wild Duck and the rain sheeting down around her. Once again, she smelled garbage and putrid waste, underscored by the stench of whisky. Emma suddenly felt herself lurching forward, unsettled and thrown off-balance; she’d been shoved.
“Prissy boy!”
“You won’t get away with cheating at cards in my salon,” a voice behind Emma boomed. She suddenly heard her voice calling out, dictating the memory in Christian’s words.
“Off! Get off! There’s no need to be so hasty! I can pay you back, Shaw!”
Christian felt Emma’s hands go cold and clammy.
“You’ll pay. Make no mistake.” Emma heard sniggers and guffaws around her. Emma turned toward the new voice, wondering why it was familiar, and she saw Donald Pierce giving her a venomous smile.
Myriad hands pulled at her, ripping at her clothing, and Emma suppressed a scream. She broke the contact sharply and reeled as she tore herself from their rapport. When she opened her eyes, Christian was wrapping her in a blanket.
“You’re shivering.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I warned you,” he scolded.
“We have to tell Adrienne.”
“She’ll never listen.”
“She has to!”
“Emma…”
“I don’t care if I have to beat it into her head!” She was adamant, even frantic, but Christian wouldn’t let her labor under any delusions.
“She wouldn’t, she won’t… she already didn’t. Emma, Adrienne called me a liar.” That caught his sister’s attention.
“Bloody hell.”
*
Emma’s father concocted a tale of a faraway, forgotten, sick aunt who needed caring for, and he decided that Emma was just the woman for the job. Emma began to pack a trunk for herself, until her father stopped her. His eyes were downcast as he stilled her hand, preventing her from adding the folded blouse to her luggage.
“You won’t need that. The creature will provide everything you need.”
“Well. She has everything worked out.” Emma stared around her room in despair, and Winston read her mind.
“A satchel might suffice. Here. Take these.” Winston packed three of her novels into a worn sack and sifted through the open trunk, removing a few of her garments and transferring them inside. Emma felt awkward watching her father help her with the task, drawing it out by methodically folding each item, telling her which items to leave behind, neatening up her bureau and armoire as he went. Emma thought her heart would break, but she remained calm and serene. Her father’s sorrow leaked through her psychic façade, despite his encouraging smile.
“You never cared for farm life.”
“There was nothing wrong with it.”
“It will be a change in scenery.” Winston took her hand and squeezed it, and Emma fondly kissed his cheek. “It’s an amazing place, but daunting. It needs the light only you can shine inside it, darling.”
“You’d send me alone?”
“I can only accompany you as far as the edge of the woods.”
“How will I find my way?” Emma felt a frisson of fear bloom in her chest, and she felt the childish urge to burrow into her father’s chest like she had as a child. Winston reached into his robe and pulled out an object wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped it, and something silver glinted up at Emma from the soft flannel. It was an antique mirror with a long, ornately carved handle, something a woman would keep on her vanity.
“It’s lovely.”
“It’s magic. It’s how I found my way home. It’s a beacon. It will lead you to the castle. The mistress of the castle will wait there for you. Emma, promise me you won’t be afraid. The creature despises fear.”
“So do I. Don’t feel any for me, Papa.”
“I can’t help it.”
“You’ll break my heart.”
“Mine’s already breaking.” He sighed heavily as she embraced him. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were supposed to be courted by dozens of suitors, so I could drive them off with my musket.”
“Dreams change.”
“Your sisters will drive me batty.”
“I’ll tell you where Christian’s been hiding his rum.”
Despite his lofty words, cold blackness settled in Winston’s heart. He was losing the apple of his eye, due entirely to his own folly.
When they descended the stairs, Christian was nowhere to be found. Adrienne glared up from her crocheting and Cordelia smirked over her cup of tea.
“Nice of you to join us while the rest of us are starving,” Adrienne snarled.
“Then perhaps you can put down the yarn and pick up the pot,” Winston suggested. “Emma’s excused from making supper.” Before she could protest, he held up his palm in warning. “She’s done more for you two layabouts than you deserve and asked little to nothing in return.” Adrienne opened her mouth like a gasping fish; Cordelia gawped and dropped her teaspoon with a clink onto the saucer. Winston pulled out Emma’s chair to make his point, and she dutifully sat and folded her hands in her lap. She hid her smile smugly as her sisters did as they were told, griping and arguing as they found cured, dried meat and peeled onions.
But it was a somber meal; it was the last one that Emma would spend with her family. Her motions were mechanical as she sopped up the gravy with the final crusts of bread.
*
Winston watched Emma give each of her sisters dutiful hugs as she prepared to depart for their “aunt’s” home. For Christian, she offered up a crushing embrace. They’d stayed the night together, with Emma chastely bundled next to him, chatting quietly in the dark before they both fell asleep.
“Return to us. I don’t care how,” Christian murmured into her hair. Adrienne and Cordelia scowled.
“Of course she’s coming back, stop your blubbering.” Christian glared at them over the top of Emma’s blonde head.
“It’s all right. I love you.” She kissed the corner of his mouth and released him reluctantly. Winston led her toward the wagon bravely, but his daughters didn’t see the white-knuckled grip he had on the reins as the Clydesdales’ hooves clopped down the gravel path. They were silent for most of the trip, and as they traveled, Emma huddled more deeply into the blanket her father thoughtfully provided. The sun sank lower in the sky, painting it with pinkish lavender clouds.
“Pink sky at night,” Winston mused, invoking the old rhyme. He hoped that the creature was in a receptive, peaceful mood. Emma wondered at the irony in his voice, until he remembered what he told her.
She controls the very winds. No creature that walks God’s earth can make it rain. Don’t provoke her. Try to please her, but please, don’t show her fear.
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White Rose