Silence stretched between them, tight and uncomfortable in a way Olivier was very used to experiencing, but never with Emilia. The closest he had ever seen Emilia to
silent
had been in class earlier that day, but while it had certainly been uneasy—uncomfortable—to see her that way, something clearly weighing on her, it was completely different from the awkwardness of this moment. Usually, Emilia was good at stretching the discomfort of other people—of the students who dared spout off something inane, Emilia glaring daggers, throwing intelligence and logic at them until they were left shamefaced and unable to speak—until they either broke or someone else—usually himself—stepped in to intervene.
Olivier had never seen
her
as the uncomfortable party, and for the life of him, he wasn’t sure even
why
she seemed to feel uncomfortable, like she couldn’t find the right words to say.
Did she think he didn’t appreciate her telling his brother—and to a lesser extent, he himself—off? Why in the world wouldn’t he? While he’d never had anyone tell him so outright to stop bowing down to his mother—the closest anyone ever came was his cousins, each of them in a similar position of tolerating their obnoxious parents until they were in a place where they could actually do something about it—it wasn’t that he didn't know exactly what anyone would see in his family’s dynamics, should they actually bother to look.
Ironic how they could sit in a restaurant, surrounded by people who kept throwing looks their way, intent to get a look at the famous de la Rue lawyers and their non-dev child—although fewer patrons had been looking that them than usual, due to the attention Emilia and the Hyrat clones were attracting—and yet not really hear what was being said. Servers stepped into their conversation, yet heard nothing amiss. Sometimes, Olivier wasn’t sure his family simply didn’t have a history of suing anyone who dared speak badly about them, unknown to the youngest members of their family and yet lingering within the minds of the public no less.
There was no way his and his cousins’ teachers hadn’t noticed the signs of subtle abuse within each of them, the way their parents' words and actions elicited flinches and frowns and tears threatening their eyes. Yet, they had never done anything. Perhaps there really were threats being issued, a long line of sealed court cases—certainly, there were no cases he could find—and rumours following his family’s reputation? Then again, perhaps it was the same thing he was reading within Emilia’s insistence that she would kill her friend’s parents, if required: he and most of his cousins were, in the end, a class unto themselves with different expectations and laws digging their claws into them, their existence creating a vacuum in which external parties’ concerned vanished.
He and his cousins were largely low-devs, viewed as something
other
by so much of Baalphoria. There was a reason most sub-30s moved to The Penns, even those who left to find careers elsewhere often returning once they had children. Halen Mhrina’s parents had famously tried to raise their child further to the west, in the industrial area of Kalink, where the Mhrina family had owned various properties and companies since leaving the Grey Sands several generations previous. How long they had been sub-30s was unknown, but when their son had tested as a low-dev and had already been causing problems at the local school—too bored with the curriculum, Olivier assumed, having also been moved up grades due to his penchant for torturing teachers when he knew the material too well—they had decided to move to The Penns.
The Penns were just better suited for dealing with low-devs, and to some extent, Olivier resented his parents for putting their careers over what would have been better for him—his cousins’ families as well.
Emilia, for all that she had killed a man, for all that her friend’s family problems still illustrated that The Penns populace wasn’t as utopic as so many low-devs, stranded outside The Penns, liked to dream they were, seemed to be well-adjusted. She had friends, was smart and confident and fearless in ways that Olivier wished he could be.
Had he grown up there, even if only after his D-Levels were tested, would he have felt more solid in who he was? More like he could go out there and tell his mother off?
Yet, Emilia wasn’t perfect—no one was, despite the terrible label that had been plastered on both of them when they were only teenagers. Currently, she was worried. Just hours earlier, she had been distracted.
Olivier didn’t like her like this, his mind and body itching to try and fix it, to try and make it better.
“Why were you upset during class?”
Big, bright eyes blinked back into focus. Where had she gone? What worries had taken over her mind?
A self-deprecating smile slid over her face. “Noticed that, did you?”
Olivier snorted—he couldn’t help it! “It wasn’t exactly subtle.”
“No? I thought I did a good job of containing~” the woman teased, tension visibly falling off her as her shoulders released, her posture shifting back into that sloppy, relaxed look his mother hated.
If he asked his mother one day if she had ever considered moving them to The Penns, Olivier wouldn’t be surprised if she said no, she hadn’t, then told him it was solely on the grounds that she disliked their culture. Even the clones, he had noticed, seemed to scream of lassitude while lingering outside his classroom, while sitting with Emilia. A few of his classmates in law school had been from The Penns as well, and they too screamed of a slowness of life—a desire to linger in the present, in the safety of their minds. Everything about them was a strange combination of idleness and minds that ran too fast. It was an odd feeling—one Emilia exuded as well.
She was constantly moving, her mind a spiralling, beautiful thing, and the feeling of it was visceral, and yet she was also this soft, smooth and quiet creature, able to freeze and watch.
It was like being watched by a monster, one with a track record of killing people no less.
The feeling was similar with many of the people he had met from The Penns, but far more palpable, only her clone friends’ energy matching her own. Something told Olivier it wasn’t so much that they were clones so much as that they were friends with this woman, absorbing her personality and habits because they loved her—and Olivier wasn’t quite sure what to do with the knowledge that Emilia had so many black knots who loved her, that despite what had occurred with the black knot she had killed, she still seemed to love them in return.
“You did do a good job containing,” Olivier assured her, filing away her bright smile falling into a mock gasp for later enjoyment as he added, “but I think you are only contained when you are distracted. Certainly, behaving yourself on purpose would require much too much effort.”
“I can behave!”
“Can you?”
“Uh, yeah! I so totally can!”
Olivier let out a contemplative hum, officially deciding that Emilia really had been worried he would be upset at her for her words to his brother. He wasn’t, and their return to the normalcy of bickering seemed to be relaxing her with ever word said, each one a confirmation that nothing between them had changed. Nothing, and yet something Olivier couldn’t quite name had—some spark igniting within him for this little girl who would tell his entire family off and then be worried she’d offended him, as though any reasonable person wouldn’t be grateful to be defended, to have the truth sprayed onto them, no matter how harsh.
“The only times I have seen you behave are today—and as I said, I am aware you were distracted by something external to the class—and the class that covered laws as they apply to Dyads. I assume you were interested for your friend? You asked far more questions of me than usual, and actually glared at a few students for getting distracted.”
Emilia, to Olivier's simultaneous horror and delight, blushed. “I— Yes. To the latter. I do not agree to the former. I could have just found today’s subject exceptionally boring.” The silverstrain girl crossed her arms and glanced away, and for the life of him, Olivier had no idea if she actually thought such bad acting would convince him or if she was playing with him.
Was this Emilia playing with him? He had had his suspicions in the past that Emilia showed her love and affection for people through teasing. Clearly, she also showed it through violence—necessary violence, but violence no less—but was this also some way of connecting with him?
As someone who really only counted relatives and the occasional student among his friends, all of them connected by law, social justice, a shared history and little else, Olivier wasn’t sure if he was reading too much into her behaviour or not. It was just as possible that this was her way of making friends, yes, but done purely to woo him into taking her case.
“Today’s topic was on the different views of censorship and directly engaged with
Lown Productions v Grevelly Road.
I assume you have some knowledge of that?”
Olivier knew Emilia did—she never came to class without reading all of the materials, even when he attempted to keep them from her. Chances were, the girl had already known about the precedent setting case of a purist suing the company that produced the anthology series
Diary of Us,
which followed various characters through their daily lives. It had not only been popular among teenagers and young adults when Emilia was one herself, but had included a silverstrain sex worker and numerous other people with irregular deviations not often seen in media, at least not as main characters or in circumstances so directly related to their genetic deviations.
The show had been lauded by a number of organizations for its even-handed and accurate portrayals of many of the characters, as well as for casting within the genetic spectrum of the characters. While there had been some pushback from people with certain irregular deviations for their portrayals—a group of silverstrains, for instance, had found issue with the character of Verona finding joy in her work, as though it weren’t simple fact that silverstrains were genetically programmed to enjoy sex more than virtually everyone else, although trauma, personality and other things could interfere with that enjoyment just as it could anyone—the biggest issue had been with purists, who viewed the show as
normalizing things that shouldn’t be normalized.
While purists like Grevelly Road, who had sued the production company on behalf of the less-than-subtle purist organization he helped run, were generally brushed off by most Baalphorians, there were laws that could be used to censor ideas that
weren’t conducive to the good of the country.
Those laws weren’t meant to be used to further a purist agenda, but they had tried and almost succeeded, which would have set a messy precedent and allowed for virtually anything to be censored if someone could argue it
potentially endangered
someone who viewed it.
During the case, which Olivier generally brought up in each of his classes, regardless of what it officially covered, due to how many of his students had watched the show, the lavender code character had been the focus of the proceeding, with lawyers for the plaintiffs arguing that normalizing lavender codes told impressionable teenagers they were perfectly safe becoming friends with one. As in, if
Diary of Us
had shown the lavender codes as actually dangerous, the case wouldn’t have gone as far as it had.
It was perfectly fine to show lavender codes, often considered the hitmen of the underworld due to how few skills could get through their defences while they were coding, as dangerous to society and the people around them. To show one as a friendly young man, just trying to get through university despite the opinions of his classmates and teachers and the constantly watching eyes of the government, was argued to be unacceptable, as though the reason so many lavender codes turned to crime wasn’t due to the discrimination they faced.
The case had been messy, many of the facts revealed during it hidden behind privacy laws—there was some speculation that the government had been forced to reveal statistics on how public perception of the danger posed by lavender codes didn’t line up with actual crime levels, and they hadn’t wanted that information to become public—but eventually the production company had won. Unfortunately, laws had yet to be written or reworded to be sure another similar case never occurred, with some speculating it was due to purist sentiment within the government itself.
Olivier wouldn’t be surprised if it was; after all, this was the same government that was trying to imprison a non-dev for self-defence, that refused to look at the laws that would lock Emilia’s friend into his parents’ seemingly shitty care if only they asked, that refused to release statistics on how the laws meant to
protect the public
actually affected anyone.
So, yes, even if Olivier hadn’t been able to immediately tell something was wrong with his most aggravating student the moment he laid eyes on her, he had certainly known the moment she said nothing about a case that directly affected the stories people could tell about her and at least a few of her friends, Dyads and black knots having also been subjects of the show and the lawsuit.
Emilia, even when she was
containing,
still filled the world—and his mind—with her presence. It was aggravating, comforting, and somehow just simply… right.
Yeah… he was so fucked.
.
!
Arc 8 | Chapter 290: Like A Monster Watching
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