Emilia’s legs idly kicked, her heels knocking against the bed of the room they'd been given. They, as in her and the kids. V had his own room elsewhere, and while Phlostra had offered to get Gale a private room, the teenager had refused. Strength in numbers, Emilia assumed, although Gale was unlikely to admit she felt safer with all of them in the same room.
Then again, maybe safety wasn’t her goal, considering she was currently trying to get Emilia to fuck off, although the teenager wasn’t saying so in quite so rude terms.
⸂You need to go to him.⸃
Emilia blinked at the girl. It was a bit uncomfortable, being told to go seek out V by a teenager. She would have assumed Gale’s goal was simply for her to use the opportunity to get more information from the man about the current situation and what in the world they were doing here, expect that wasn’t the case.
⸂Do you really want to wake up tomorrow and realize that woman made moves on him before you did? All because you wanted a good night’s sleep?⸃ Gale glowered down at her, her crossed arms making her look like an angry older sibling, menacing their younger, stupider sister into making moves on some guy. It would have been humorous, if it weren’t inappropriate: Gale was barely a teenager! And yet here she was, lecturing an adult—someone who would normally be considered an old lady in this world—about adult things!
“I’m pretty sure I’ve already made multiple moves on him,” Emilia scribbled out. Phlostra had left her aethervoice suppressed, although that suppression would drop when the woman slept. It was unclear when that would be—apparently the woman needed to go report what had happened to various other people—but it was liable to be sometime in the next few hours.
⸂Do you think anything other than who’s closest matters to a man?⸃
Emilia gaped up at the girl. “What? Where did you learn that?”
Gale glared at the note, then to the other end of the bed, where Astra and Caro were curled against one another. Not knowing too much about how the rules of raids were generally set up, Emilia wasn’t sure if Astra was tired because her body was that of a child or not. They had travelled quite a bit, since their nap at the end of the labyrinth, but both kids had slept sporadically in her and V’s arms during their descent. She and Gale should be the tired ones, yet it was the kids, and all Emilia could chalk it up to was their ages.
⸂After Ash…⸃ Gale started before her voice trailed off, something about it telling Emilia this wasn’t something she talked about often, if at all. The girl’s weight shifted, her arms uncrossed, crossed again. Finally, she turned and plopped down beside Emilia, the bed bouncing quietly with her fall.
⸂My mom shut down. They’d been trying for another kid, but…⸃ She shook herself, cheeks lighting up as she told Emilia that she’d overheard them arguing in the years after her sibling’s accident about how they didn’t have sex anymore.
“Well, that’s more than anyone needs to know about their parent’s sex lives,” Emilia wrote, quickly adding, “THAT WAS NOT MY FAULT!” when Gale pointed out that she’d accidentally shared things that were clearly about her and V—not to mention some dude named Olivier’s—sex lives.
Mortifyingly, Gale followed up by asking if she knew anything about her own parent’s sex lives. Morbid curiosity, the teenager explained. People in this world didn’t talk about sex with anyone outside of their partners. Inevitably, this meant that whenever Gale had tried to bring up what she knew with her friends, they had pretty much died of mortification.
“Do you really want to know?” Emilia asked, already gauging what she had accidentally learned over the years against the girl’s age and curiosity and inability to get answers anywhere else.
“I know they have sex. I’m not sure how much, given they’re getting on in age, but when I was younger, their sex lives were active enough for their friends to question them on how bringing kids into their house was going to affect them—my siblings and I are adopted,” she added, when Gale gave her a confused look. “My mom can’t have kids, so they never have to use protection against pregnancy. Found that out when I went to go… procure some protection for myself. None to be found. Ah… does something birth control exist here?”
Birth control did exist, apparently. Gale didn’t know much about it, but talk about its existence was as close as most teens got to sex ed. Birth control kept you from getting pregnant. Pregnancy led to blood. Birth control was only available once you were married. Thus, don’t have sex unless you want everyone up in your business, trying to make sure your uterus didn’t destroy a city.
According to Gale, most kids followed those rules. Occasionally, someone didn’t. Things usually didn’t end well for them.
⸂Anyways,⸃ the teenager continued, her tone grumpy because she hadn’t been able to force answers about the guy teenage Emilia had been searching out birth control for out of her, ⸂my dad… went looking elsewhere. It didn’t result in any half-siblings, but my mom still found out. It was her fault, for not… you know.⸃
Emilia wished she could speak to the girl, whisper into her that it was never the other person’s fault when their partner—their wife, husband, the person who was supposed to be their best friend—cheated on them. She scribbled out notes to that effect, but it wasn’t the same as hearing it—as feeling the emotion in the other person’s voice—would have been.
Gale looked down at her note, contemplating it but not completely believing it. ⸂You should still go,⸃ she whispered. ⸂He has answers to questions and… and I know you want to. I can see it. I might think you can do better than that guy, but if that’s who you want…⸃
Speaking of which…
⸂Eh…⸃ Gale pulled at a loose thread on her oversized sweater as she contemplated how to answer Emilia’s question of why she didn’t think V was good enough for her. They’d all been happily supplied with more clothes by Phlostra, including matching sleep sweaters. They were huge and ridiculously comfortable, each a soft, fuzzy pale pink.
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Emilia joined Gale as she flopped backward, their legs hanging uselessly over the edge of the bed. The teenager stared at the ceiling, Emilia stared at her. ⸂I don’t know. I guess it isn’t that he isn’t good enough for you. There’s just something about you two that doesn’t fit, and before you say it, I know I didn’t see much of you guys together. Miira already lectured me about that. She thinks I just don’t like men.⸃
“Do you?” Emilia signed.
The local girl shrugged, and Emilia wasn’t sure if it meant she didn’t know or something more complicated—sometimes, or I like both girls and boys, or everyone is gross. Emilia wouldn’t have been surprised if it were the latter.
Still, she couldn’t exactly disagree with the girl. She and V… fit, but didn’t. They were two brats, pushing and shoving at boundaries. If they really wanted it to work—wanted something more permanent between them… Well, Emilia had seen crazier combinations works—Nettie and Charles, for one—but it felt like they needed something—someone—more. Or, for one of them to bend themselves into the controlling, sensible element of their relationship.
Something told her neither of them would be into that.
“Who says this is anything more than a fling?” Emilia wrote, her words sloppier than usual over the notebook as she attempted to write lying down.
Evidently, due to sex being off limits until marriage, flings weren’t a thing. Gale was fascinated to know that people in her world just went off with anyone who struck their fancy—that it was perfectly okay to have long and short-term relationships.
Unfortunately, the girl’s fascination forced Emilia to sit back up, so she could write out a watered-down description of her hookup and dating history. To Gale, the most interesting thing seemed to be how she really hadn’t had any long-term relationships, despite her age.
⸂Has there never been anyone?⸃ Gale asked, after a brief moment of Emilia trying to explain what an open relationship was, the teenager having become confused when she realized Emilia was dating someone but also doing something with V in this world.
This was a terrible conversation, how did she end up here!? From everything Emilia knew about this world, most of what her own life had been—in terms of relationships and sex—had no equivalent here, so why was this discussion even happening!?
Suddenly, she felt bad for their own sex ed teachers, facing down an army of giggling children and snarky teenagers as they tried to explain the myriad of different relationships in the world. What a horrible job! She didn’t envy them at all! And their students always asked such inappropriate questions! Things just like Gale was asking, about what sorts of relationships they’d had and how their love life was going. It was terrible! Was this the universe come for payment for her voice lending strength to some of those questions!?
Emilia tapped her pen against the notebook, contemplating her answer. “There have been,” she finally wrote one. “My longest relationship… it wouldn’t have worked forever”—for one thing, if she’d tried to marry her ex chances where Olivier and Rafe would have teamed up to get rid of him, not to mention the whole hopefully she would have grown into a person capable of telling him to shove off thing—“but there were other people. It didn’t work out.”
The answer to why was already flowing out of her when Gale asked, curious and sad. She’d sat up as well, her head rested against Emilia’s shoulder. When had things become like this? Some relationship closer to friends, perhaps even siblings, rising between them? It wasn’t like they had known each other long, and yet… Emilia wasn’t sure if it were her, or something in the raid platform—or the platform maintainer—fucking with things. The quickness of her friendships and connections in this world was just strange. Astra, Gale, V. Even on a lower level, with Rin and Key, Boundary and Benny—Conrad as well, in a strange way. Every relationship seemed to hit hard and strong, forming into something powerful within days, if not hours, of meeting.
It was strange, but somehow right all at once.
Low-key, she was also growing increasingly concerned about it. At first, she’d chalked it up to something Payton was doing, returning her to her formally friendly self. As time went on, though, she wasn’t so sure that was all there was too it.
“The first… I don’t know what happened. We were never really dating, but I thought… maybe, one day. Then he left without much explanation, and… I don’t know. It was only ever a maybe, so it was easy to get over, more or less. Then there was someone else, and…”
And Emilia couldn’t finish that sentence—couldn’t physically write out the reality that she’d never been able to completely get over Olivier. Over half a lifetime later, he still owned part of her. Probably always would. He had left her, though. Walked away from the brief fling and never looked back at her as anything more than a friend and occasional fuck—possibly as some part of his past that he couldn’t ditch as well, at times.
“And we wouldn’t have worked out, anyways,” she finished, although given how long she had hesitated—the way Gale’s fingers were running soothingly over her arm—the girl obviously knew that wasn’t the whole story. “We were never together together either. His life is complicated, and his parents would hate me.”
She’d met the de la Rue parentals a few times, but they always seemed to stare through her, their eyes not really comprehending her existence or understanding why she was there. Knowing what she did about them, Emilia knew she wasn’t the type of person they had in mind for their son—for the powerhouse of their family, regardless of how rogue he had apparently been going since the war. Something they'd blame her for, definitely.
⸂You should go,⸃ Gale whispered, sounding so sleepy that when her fingers stilled a moment later, her breathing evening out as dreams overtook her, Emilia wasn’t surprised.
Thankfully, the teenager was light and fast asleep within the safety of people she trusted. Moving her properly into the bed was no trouble. Almost immediately, the girl turned, seeking out the warm shapes of Caro and Astra to wrap around them.
Emilia made her way to the closed curtains, intent to let the night in and seek sleep herself. Yes, she did want to go track down V, but also, comfortable bed. The man would wait for her, or he wouldn’t. She had asked for what she wanted, more or less: exclusivity within the raid. He hadn’t answered, but he had clearly understood. Depending on what Fran did tonight—whether she risked staking her own claim, despite what had happened earlier or not—Emilia might have her answer in the morning.
The curtains slid open and darkness began to eat the room, and Emilia hurried back to her side of the bed. Just as her fingers brushed the soft bedding, someone knocked lightly on the door. It didn’t take a genius to realize who it was, and when the door opened to V, Emilia was unsurprised.
⸂Want to go for a midnight walk?⸃ the man asked, the same strange mood filling his eyes as earlier.
Emilia glanced back at the kids. Asleep and so small. Vulnerable.
⸂They’ll be safe here,⸃ V promised, and Emilia hadn’t regretted trusting him yet.
“Alright,” she said, letting the door shut behind her.