Emma didn't go upstairs.
She stopped halfway up the first step, hand on the banister, knuckles white around the worn oak. That is to say that there was something off. Maybe, it was not the way that a man would come to show what it means to love someone. What you need is to know what that love is capable of to get ahead of everyone. Then she turned. Slow. Deliberate. Like a door creaking open on rusted hinges that had been locked for years.
She came back into the living room. Yeah. Sure. She seemed dead mad about what was going on in her house. Stood in the middle of the rug. The lamp caught the side of her facehalf gold, half shadowand for a second she looked older than nineteen, older than any of them had any right to be or perhaps it should be past of the stars that we want to get to know everything to be off its way.
Karl felt it before she spoke that something was going to happen in the most outrageous way to shake the limit of what it means to be alive with the need for love and what can be done for that need to be appreciated. The shift in the air. The way the quiet stopped being comfortable and started feeling like the moment before a storm breaks glass.
Emma looked at Larisa first. Not at Karl. Straight at the girl still sitting under the quilt, hand still laced with his brother's. war declaration.
Emma:
(standing up abruptly, quilt sliding off her lap like shed skin, voice dropping to something low and dangerous)
You know what? No. I'm done pretending this is cute. Done pretending I'm just the big sister who gets to smile and clap while you two rewrite the whole damn family script without me. I want to kiss every soft place of you, make you blush and faint, pleasure you until you weep, and dry every tear with my lips. If you only knew how I crave the taste of you. I want to take you in my hands and mouth and feast on you. I want to drink wine and honey from you. Maybe, this is not enough for me to test you in what happens to look for real deal about what it means to get to know the need of life and how much I love cannot measured by eternity of the moment.
Larissa:
(doesn't rise, doesn't flinch, just tilts her head slightly calm water waiting for the stone that does not wait for any approval to refer the order of life when it deserve something good to continue)
Then say what you actually came to say, Emma. No more dancing. Love is never any better than the lover. That is to say that we cannot forget how we used to be the way a menace cannot be known to the whole world. As for that, I really continue thinking that there gotta be something that you are missing. That is to say that this love could be not true. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye
Emma:
Fine.
(eyes locked on Larissa, hard enough to bruise)
This ends. You and him. Tonight. Tomorrow. Whenever you think you're safe. I'm declaring war, Larisa. Open. No rules. No mercy. You don't get to walk into my house, into my brother's life, into his fucking soul, and act like you belong there more than I do Can you love my brain even when it is small? When it is malevolent? When it is violent? Can you love it even when it does not love me? That is to say that it does not love itself, but what the idea maybe. Perhaps, Anaxagoras was right: everything is mind.
Karl started to stand.
Karl:
Emma—
Emma:
Shut up, Karl. Just shut up for once.
(turns back to Larissa, voice cracking open now, raw underneath the steel)
I loved him first.
Not the way you love him. Not the smart, quiet, cosmic way you do. I loved him the ugly way. The way you love someone when you're both kids and the world is already trying to break him, and you're the only one small enough to crawl under the table with him when the teachers call him thug and the questions won't stop screaming in his head.
That is why you should hear this:
Ballade for My husband
Oh, my Karl dear!
Thine eyes, a light I crave,
Through mist and shadow clear—
Though veiled, yet bright and brave.
By thee my heart is swayed,
And wherefore should'st thou see
But only me?
Oh, my husband, thy kiss—divine,
As if a god had touched my lips,
Burns with a warmth celestial,
Yet cools as distant eclipses.
As endless stars in thee ignite,
Who stole thee from my arms' embrace,
And cast my love to fate?
My spirit oft is sorrow-pressed,
My blood runs still, my heart is weak,
Yet when thy gaze upon me rests,
The will to power wakes in me.
I see thee near, I see thee far,
Yet know not when nor where nor how—
I only know I love thee well,
To grace thee with eternal vow.
If but a fleeting glance I steal,
Upon thy roguish midnight eyes,
And on thy arching brows revealed,
My soul in rapture flies.
Has any lips so fair a form?
Has any cheek such tender grace?
Ah, she who once thy beauty meets,
Shall ne'er another's love embrace.
I held him when he cried over paradoxes at eleven. That is to say that the need for life escapes my realityI lied to Dad so he could stay up reading Upanishads instead of sleeping. I fought every bully who looked at him sideways. I carried his silence when no one else could stand it.
That's mine. He's mine. Not in the way you want him. In the way blood and years and shared nightmares are mine.
Larissa:
(quiet, almost gentle)
I know. It is pretty obvious that you love him.
Emma:
No you don't. You think you do because you sit with him in the dark now, because you answer his questions with better questions, because you make him breathe steady when the void gets loud. But you weren't there when the void first moved in. that is to say that you would never get to know the idea of what love means to search for the idealization of what love can become. The thing is, the need for love cannot be put out. You didn't see the nights he stared at the ceiling until dawn because Leibniz wasn't enough and nothing was ever going to be enough. You didn't wipe snot and tears off his face at three in the morning because he thought he was broken for wanting answers no one could give. That is to say that I cannot look for any aspiration, but you.
I did.
And I'm not giving him up to you. Not because you're prettier. Not because you're smarter. Not because the universe apparently decided you two are some poetic inevitability.
I'm taking him back.
Karl:
(standing now, voice low, dangerous in its calm)
Emma. Stop.
Emma:
No. You stop pretending this doesn't tear me apart.
(turns to him, eyes wet but burning)
I love you, you idiot. Not like a sister should. Not like I'm supposed to. I love you the way a soldier loves the only other person who survived the same war. it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel. The way someone loves the only mirror that ever showed them their real face and didn't flinch. I've loved you since we were kids sharing a bedroom wall, since I heard you whispering questions to the dark like prayers. I've loved you every time you solved something impossible and still looked at me like I was the only thing that made sense afterward. I mean, it is not like you can get it. I wanna be your wife or perhaps as usual you would pretend not to know. That is to say that I want you to love me in all my colors.
I love you more than she ever could. Because I loved you when you were nothing but questions and bruises and a kid who thought he didn't deserve to exist.
And I'm not letting her have what I bled for.
Larissa:
(stands slowly, steps forward—not aggressive, just closing distance)
Then fight for it.
But not like this. Not by trying to break what he's finally found.
You think I don't see how much you carry? How much you've carried? I do. Every time he talks about you his voice changes. Softens. Like you're still the only safe place he remembers.
But love isn't territory, Emma. It isn't a war you win by drawing lines in blood.
If you really love him, you don't demand he choose. You let him be big enough for both of us.
Emma:
(laughs—bitter, broken)
Pretty words. Very pretty.
But I'm not pretty tonight.
I'm declaring war.
You want him? Earn him. Every day. Every night. Prove you can carry what I carried without breaking. Prove you can love the broken parts without trying to fix them into something that fits your perfect little cosmic symmetry.
Because if you can't—if you flinch even once when the questions get ugly again—
I'll be right here. Waiting.
And I'll take him back.
Karl:
(voice cracking for the first time)
Emma… stop. Please.
You're not losing me. You never were.
But you're losing yourself right now.
Emma:
(eyes on him, tears finally spilling)
Maybe I already did.
The day I realized you didn't need me to hold the dark anymore.
The day you looked at her the way you used to look at me—like I was the answer.
(she turns, grabs her duffel, walks to the stairs)
War's on, Larisa.
And I don't lose the people I love.
Not even to you.
(footsteps up the stairs. Door slams. Silence crashes in behind her like a wave.)
Larissa:
(quiet, to Karl, hand finding his again)
She's hurting.
Let her hurt.
She'll come back when she remembers you're not a prize to be won.
You're a person to be loved.
And she already does.
Karl:
(voice rough, staring at the stairs)
Yeah.
She does.
And that's the part that's killing her.
(The lamp flickers once. Rain hammers the roof harder.
Somewhere upstairs, Emma cries like the child she used to be.
Downstairs, two people sit under the quilt again, holding on tighter—not because they're winning,
but because love, real love, sometimes means refusing to let anyone walk away alone.
Even when they declare war on your heart.)
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