Jake and Emma - Saturday evening

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Emma kidnaps Jake to Boston to interrogate him about Adrienne.



Emma's invitation to Jake to visit her in Boston had lacked her usual subtlety. Having a driver appear at his door and escort him to her private jet had been far more direct, and far less likely to be evaded, than the norm. Particularly considering the physical dimensions of the driver she had sent.

Her smile, however, was beaming as Jake entered her office. "Jake, darling," she almost cooed. "So glad you could make the time to come. Unfortunately my duties have tied me to Boston more than usual and bringing you here was the only way I could get to see you. I have missed you, you know."

"This is your way of getting out of buying me dinner, isn't it?" he said with a smile, dropping into a chair. He shook his head. "I would have guessed dinner to be much cheaper than all of this, but it's possible I wasn't thinking on a large enough scale. How are you?"

"I am superb, Jake. I would possibly go so far as to say magnificent. I am, however, concerned about your health." Emma's smile altered, just a tiny bit. Just enough to shift it from benevolent to predatory.

It was almost certainly poor form to run screaming for the door at Frost Enterprises. Still, that didn't keep Jake from thinking about it. Mostly because if he thought about that, he wouldn't think about any of a number of other things that he'd rather Emma not catch him thinking about. "Oh?" Might as well walk into the trap. "And what sorts of things have you heard about my health?"

"That it may be about to take a sudden and dire turn for the worse," replied Emma and her expression was suddenly serious. "My sister is not at her best and you may have something to do with that. Just tell me, Jake, do I have to shoot you again?" She raised a finger as Jake's eyebrow rose. "Shoot at you again?" she corrected herself. "Possibly with less of the whole 'missing you' thing this time."

He held his hands up, palms towards her. "I don't think either of us--any of us," he corrected, including Adrienne in his assessment, "would be happy about that. Besides, I'm told Remy has a rule against Snow Valley employees shooting each other?"

He sighed, settling back in his chair. "Your sister had issues long before I ever showed up. Some of which were obvious, some of which weren't. In my own defense, I never expected her to have arm amputation trauma."

Emma actually blinked at Jake's last sentence. "I'm not an employee of Snow Valley," she noted absently. "Technically, I finance it, so I'm allowed to shoot whomsoever I believe needs to be shot." She stopped for a moment, gathered her thoughts, but she couldn't help the incredulity that laced her next words. "An arm amputation trauma? Jake, just tell me what happened."

He squirmed. Maybe he should just let Emma shoot him. "With me, with her or with us?"

"You know I could just take it out of your mind if I wanted to," said Emma. "I don't want to, Jake. I know how much it would hurt both of us. The bare bones will do. Of all of it. You, her, both." She paused and then added, "But I really do want to know how arm amputation trauma comes into it. Surprise me, Jake."

He raised an eyebrow, then sighed. "One of my arms was taken, and is still out there, somewhere, having any number of unspeakable things done to it. This causes all sorts of wonderful side effects, like waking up every morning without an arm. Your sister used her powers to watch someone's arm get ripped off, and I get the impression that this was someone important to her." He ran a hand over his mouth, not relishing the thought of telling Emma the next part. "Put the two of us in a fairly intimate situation where my arm disappears, just add water--instant trauma."

Emma let Jake's words settle in for a while, rolling them around in her head. "You slept with my sister and your arm disappeared at, I would suspect, a moment when your control was less than optimal and - let me guess - she screamed and ran away?" She held up a finger for a moment, forestalling Jake's response to what was, essentially, a rhetorical question. Emma thought over her knowledge of her sister's recent past and the nature of Adrienne's issues, as Jake called them. She finally settled on the most important response to Jake's short speech. "You managed to persuade my sister to sleep with you." Her smile was back suddenly. "Congratulations."

Yeah. He should have just let her shoot him. "Thank you?" He resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. "Like I said, she's got some serious issues that had nothing to do with my, or anyone else's, arm." He favored her with a curious look. "She's a lot more fragile than I would have expected."

Emma's shrug was tiny. "Adrienne made some bad choices in her life. She thought she could protect herself from monsters by making them love her. It's taken her a long time to learn that monsters don't ever love anyone other than themselves. Daddy dearest has a lot to pay for. Isn't it nice to know that I'm extracting payment in full in such a loving and lingering fashion?" Emma's smile was bright and entirely false. "Families are fun, aren't they?"

That explained a lot about his and Adrienne's interactions. "I swear I stick around just to make my family look normal by comparison," he declared. "I never thought the Gavins could look so...boring next to you all."

Emma's smile relaxed into something more natural. "The Gavins got greed and a certain attitude to what they consider proprietary goods that is probably not considered entirely acceptable by a range of authorities, including the Surgeon-General. The Frosts got a range of vices that plumb some truly Stygian depths. Adrienne and I reacted to our family situation in diametrically opposite ways, Jake. She developed a power that means that anything she touches hurts her. I developed a diamond shell. It's entirely likely that Freud, if that dear old umbrella-wielding man was still alive, would have wet dreams about the pair of us."

He snorted at that, carefully filing away the information Emma was giving him. "I'm sure he wouldn't be the only one," he said with a smirk.

"I should certainly hope not," replied Emma, matching his smirk. She stood up and walked around the desk, holding her arm out to Jake. "Seeing that I don't have to shoot you yet, I think I might owe you that dinner. You can tell me more about the business with your arm. If you make it sufficiently fascinating, I might even finance a rescue bid." She patted Jake's shoulder lightly. "You're currently my favourite metamorph, you know. I generally prefer that my favourite metamorphs have all of their attachments."

"What we don't, we're good at compensating for," he said with a suggestive grin. "Now. I believe you promised to make at least one waiter cry for me tonight?"