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It was a stupid question.
It was a stupid question from a stupid game that wasn’t worth the stupid card stock it was printed on.
Who in their right mind thought icebreaker questions were fun anyway? It was the kind of thing dating apps asked to give unfunny people a chance to churn out one of the overdone zingers they stole from reddit comments, or worse: Minions memes.
Any allergies? Seafood – I see food………. and eat it! XD
Give her a fucking break.
Really, they should have played Never Have I Ever like normal people – not this job-interview-type crap. She would much rather admit that she once had sex in a bush in People Park than… than this.
“If you had the chance to talk to yourself at thirteen years old, what would you say?” Kay dutifully read the card she pulled, her words slurring ever-so-slightly from the alcohol. If this conversation was heading the direction Ema feared, then she wished they were all twice as drunk. “Ooooh that’s a good one,” Kay cooed. “I think I would tell her… everything is going to be okay.” She smiled with an optimism Ema hadn’t felt since she was actually thirteen.
“A bit trite, Fraulëin, but a beautiful sentiment nonetheless,” Klavier commented, clutching a cocktail glass almost lazily between his fingers. It was a wonder he didn’t spill it, but The Fop had an effortless grace to him, much as Ema was loath to admit it, and he wouldn’t do something as careless as spilling a drink, even as tipsy as he was.
Kay stuck out her tongue. “It’s not trite if it’s true! Besides, not all of us are poetic enough to have our songs played on the radio.”
“I’d argue none of us are,” Apollo grumbled, earning himself a pampered elbow to the ribs.
On a good night, Ema would be more than eager to join him in knocking that egocentric nepobaby down a peg or two, but it wasn’t a good night. The hypothetical lodged itself into her mind, clouding her vision and stealing her focus. How Apollo or Klavier might have answered it was lost on her as an all too familiar self-loathing spread across her chest and settled deep into her stomach.
If you had the chance to talk to yourself at thirteen years old, what would you say?
What did it matter? Who cared? It wasn’t as if she could speak to her teenage self. Magic wasn’t real, and time travel wasn’t scientifically possible. If it was, she sure as hell wouldn’t use it to deliver a meaningless platitude to some naive kid who already thought she knew everything.
She could prevent the Library of Alexandria from burning down. Stop Joe Darke from escaping interrogation, and save both her sister and Neil Marshall in one fell swoop. Kill whatever music executive thought it was a good idea to give Klavier Gavin a fucking record deal. There were far better uses of that power – uses that would benefit society in a meaningful way. She wouldn’t use it to speak to herself. Who would?
And even if she could speak to herself, what good would that do? Ema remembered what it was like to be thirteen. The last thing kids that age want is an adult dictating their life choices. She had thought herself so mature with her lab coat and her clipboard, spraying luminol all over Lana’s desk as she rattled off scientific terms she could barely pronounce but felt so smart for having known at all. She wouldn’t have listened to anyone trying to encourage her to choose a different career path, even if that person was herself. She had her heart set on forensics, and not even the gates of hell would have stopped her from pursuing her dream.
Ema wished she still had that drive, but there were only so many times she could pick herself back up after failing before she began to wonder if getting back up at all was worth the effort.
For a moment, she tried to picture it. She imagined looking into that little girl’s hopeful eyes and telling her that she would grow up to be a failure. She wasn’t a scientific investigator. She had failed the forensics exam three times, and was well on her way to failing it a forth. It didn’t matter how much she studied or how hard she tried. She wasn’t smart enough for a career that required this much technical knowledge. She was stupid for ever thinking she was smart at all. It would be better for the both of them if teenage Ema gave up on her dream now while she was still young and had yet to waste all her time pursuing a useless degree she would do nothing with.
Teenage Ema wouldn’t understand. Those big eyes would fracture, would splinter, would scream ‘How could you say that?!’ until her throat was raw and her face was wet. She wouldn’t recognise the woman she grew into. She certainly wouldn’t be proud of her.
Whatever. Ema didn’t need to be someone her younger self would be proud of. A lot can change in a decade. Just because her life didn’t go the direction she thought it would didn’t mean she had let herself down. It didn’t mean that she had failed her.
Then why did she feel like she had?
“What about you, Ema?” Kay asked politely, and suddenly all three sets of eyes were on her. “What would you say?”
It was a pointless question. There was nothing to be gained by entertaining it.
“...That hat is stupid, and your tights are hideous.” She stood up before anyone tried to press her for a more sincere answer. “Who wants another drink?”
Ema didn’t bother turning on the lights when she returned home that night to her tiny studio apartment. The bright neon sign of the twenty-four hour drug store across the street was enough to light her way.
Drunkenly stumbling towards the corner she designated as her bedroom, Ema kicked off her shoes and dropped her coat on the floor before collapsing into her unmade bed in a heap. She laid there for a moment, head buzzing the way it did every night before a bad hangover, and then rolled onto her back. She picked up a picture frame from where it sat facedown on her bedside table.
She stared at her own grinning face as she saluted into the camera, Lana’s police hat perched on her head. Lana herself stood proudly next to her with an unguarded happiness Ema hadn’t seen in her in years. It had been a long time since either of them smiled like that.
“I’m going to pass the Forensics exam,” she muttered, brushing a thumb over their faces. “No matter how many tries it takes, no matter how many times I fail. I’m going to do it. I’m… going to make you proud of me. Both of you.”
Her younger self beamed up at her. Ema liked to think she would have done the same if she had told her face-to-face too.