Next Great Experiment

by signelchan

Thoughts of what one wants in life are normal, but when those thoughts involve the presence of small children, there are several different avenues for appeasing them. The biggest issue for Laurent, though, is that his solution is much different than the solution everyone else has for the problem he's facing.

The thought of being around a small child hadn't really occurred that often to Laurent, as he had always considered himself too focused on science and study to entertain the idea that someday he could be in a position of watching someone small and unable to fend for themselves. When the thought did first strike him, it was when listening to a friend talk about their experience watching their younger, born-in-timeline self, and naturally the thought was about what he would do if he were tasked with the same thing.

After deeming it a silly thought he tried to move on, but he found himself slipping back to thinking about it multiple times, distracting him from whatever he was trying to do with the mere concept of having a younger version of himself to watch and teach the finer things in life to. That led to him approaching his parents about the probability that this recurring thought would become reality, something that they laughed off as being impossible at that exact point in time. His mother was too busy keeping up with research of her own, his father too dedicated to what he wanted to spend his life doing to spare the time to start a family.

That was what had been expected, and Laurent wasn't put off by the reply he got from the two of them; after all, these were his parents he was dealing with, and he knew how they'd handle certain situations pretty well. But the need to have a small child around, for the sake of showing someone the ropes of diligent study and research while young in life, wasn't going to loosen its grip on his soul just because his parents had no intentions of bringing a proper version of him into the world. He'd just have to find a different source for a child to borrow and watch on occasion.

Never once had he considered that he could have been that exact source he was looking for, because while he wanted a child to have around him for this one specific instance he wasn't looking for a child to keep around forever. Becoming a parent would put a limit on the things he would be able to do with his time, and he was already finding that he didn't have enough time to do the things he wanted. The couple of years he'd spent traveling throughout the land to find new concepts and make unique discoveries had ultimately been a waste when compared to what he could have done if he'd stayed around home. Of course, the feeling of wasted time wasn't just due to the rather weak research his travels had allowed him to do—the fact that he'd had to spend a decent chunk of time consoling his girlfriend about every little thing was to blame as well.

It wasn't that going out and having an adventure like that with Noire was a bad thing, and Laurent had enjoyed having her at his side for the years they were going, but she was a bit much to handle at times and always had the vocal fear that she was going to get cursed by something. When they'd finally come home and she hadn't had a single curse be flung her way the whole time, she became apologetic and wouldn't stop saying sorry for "ruining" their research trip, despite all the times he'd told her that she was fine and hadn't done anything to warrant the apologies.

Not long after their return was when he'd first heard someone talking about their child self, and in conjunction with the realization that he wanted a child around Laurent was also hit with the fact that they'd missed years of post-war growth and development. He and Noire hadn't been the only ones to go out and do their own thing, as he learned when he came back to the house they'd been sharing with many of their friends in the war's immediate aftermath and found that most of them had left. The ones who'd stayed were ones who had direct ties to the Ylisse royal family or weren't ready to leave their parents or baby selves, and after Laurent understood this fact he knew that he had to make the choice to leave once more as well, this time to move elsewhere, not just journey.

The choice for where to go was fairly obvious, with all things considered, but it required some commitment from others that weren't just him and Noire. They were willing to branch out and do their own thing, but they needed to know that they'd have friends around wherever they went, as well as an easy way to get back home if something were to happen with his parents (as she wanted no contact with hers and they had long since moved on anyway). That was how they ultimately ended up moving near the wyvern valley, somewhere rather isolated from most people but close enough to ones that did matter and that they did want to be around.

There was no denying that branching out and starting their own lives like they were was easily the most important choice they'd made, even more than spending those years wandering the world in search of scientific discoveries. But there was a bittersweet aspect to the whole thing, especially when they showed up at the doorstep of their nearest known neighbors and were greeted with familiar faces in a new situation of their own: it seemed that in the time they'd been gone, everyone had not just left but gotten married and started families of their own, and for the case of the couple there in the valley, the first one had become their reality.

It was a long conversation that caught them all up on what had happened in the time since the war's final battle, with little time spent initially on what everyone else outside of their foursome had done. But when they had run out of things to share about themselves, it came time to start talking about others, and the two who'd been back in Ylisstol more recently were the ones who had to do the sharing. The whole time they spoke, Laurent felt himself holding his tongue as he talked about who they'd seen that had done what, knowing that if he mentioned children (of the "this is someone's present-timeline self" and the "this is their actual child" varieties) he would most likely slip into talking about his desire to spend time with a baby. This didn't deter from what he was telling his old friends too much, because they didn't seem to care about details regarding children, or at least, that's what it seemed to be for most of the conversation.

"Okay, hearing about what you saw people doing's great and all," Severa eventually snapped, breaking Laurent from his concentration on retelling everything he'd learned and causing him to look at her, pushing his glasses up his nose as he did. She brushed her dirty blonde bangs out of her face as she glared back at him, rolling her eyes before she continued her thought. "I'm sure everyone's doing some amazing things now that there's not a giant murder dragon terrorizing life as they know it! But I don't want to keep hearing about that, I want to hear about the babies!"

"The babies," he repeated, feeling the pressure of keeping this professional taking over. "I'm afraid that I cannot tell you much about babies, it seemed that no one wanted us to—"

"I know which parents haven't had their babies yet and I've been living out here in this valley in the middle of nowhere for a whole now! How can you have been in Ylisstol and not know that?" She looked angered at his denial of information but sounded amused, almost as if she was catching onto why he was being cagey with what he said. "There's two princesses in the royal family and one prince, there's babies belonging to some of the other Shepherds, there's no baby me yet and I'm sure there's no baby of either of you too."

As she waggled a finger between him and Noire, Laurent knew that she was going to move into naming off specific child versions of their friends if he didn't speak up soon enough, but the problem was that he didn't want to say anything. He had zero intention of telling her about the other children he'd heard talk of while they'd been in town. That was him, though, and Noire wasn't obligated to keep those same things quiet. "I…don't want to interrupt you, Severa," she timidly said, getting a necessary silence in return, "but we didn't meet any other babies while we were there. We did hear about some, maybe-possibly babies, but we didn't meet any."

The silence remained, with Severa turning her sights on Noire instead of Laurent, giving him a moment to breathe in relief that he was no longer on the spot. That wasn't for the best, however, because it meant that Noire was the one effectively responsible for what was about to be said, and there was no denying that it was going to be said right there. "Go on, keep talking," Severa told her, waggling her finger once more, this time impossibly close to Noire's face. "I want to know what you've got to say, no one bothers telling those of us living on our own anything!"

"Well, uh, it might be just rumors but like I said, we didn't meet any babies so I don't know if me telling you…would be…" She trailed off as she kept watching Severa's finger moving in front of her, it losing steam in time with her thoughts coming to an abrupt end, something that was followed with a bellowing yell that was in stark contrast from the timid voice Noire normally spoke with. "What do you think you're doing, treating me like this? I'm not a slave to give you knowledge!"

Severa retracted her hand before Noire could grab it for herself. "Sorry, I'm just curious and you're the only ones who've bothered coming here to see us since we moved here! How else am I supposed to know anything?"

"You could stop being a bitch and—" Noire's rude comment was cut off by Laurent grabbing her and putting the crook of his arm right over her mouth so she couldn't keep speaking. Try as hard as she might, she was only biting his robes in an attempt to get set free and wasn't doing him any harm.

"Somehow I correctly assumed that your treatment of us as bringers of gossip and knowledge would result in her lashing out like this," he said, letting Noire squirm and try to break free from his grasp (which wasn't impressively strong, until it was put into consideration that she wasn't strong either). "What a conundrum, now you are expecting information from us and neither of us are in the mindset to bestow it upon you."

"Neither of you? But you're perfectly able to do it!" He flinched as she reminded him of that fact, because it was true that there seemed to be nothing stopping him from sharing the news about babies that had been conceived or born in their collective absence. The pleading look he shot at her was done over the rim of his glasses, as an attempt to get her to realize he was trying to keep something to himself, but Severa was never the kind of person to keep other people's wishes in mind when she wanted something. "Come on Laurent, just open that wordy mouth of yours and tell me who's got kids. It's that simple."

"Contrary to your belief, it is not that simple at all." Letting go of Noire for a second, only for her to start kicking up an argument that Severa was a lot of nasty things for using them as she was, he covered her mouth back up and looked at his blonde friend, his mind focusing not on her but on her hair. They both had a red-haired mother and a blond father, yet her hair had been just like her father's while his had been a mix of his parents', something he'd always found strange about them. If they were to someday meet their baby selves, would the same be true for them?

He was staring at her and he knew it, but he was so lost in the thoughts about hair color and the probability that the versions of them in the present timeline, if they ever existed, would look identical to them. Severa cleared her throat after a few seconds of being stared at, making faces at Laurent to see if he'd flinch and break from his distraction; when that didn't work she dramatically sighed and left the conversation, something that would have been effective had Laurent not already moved past her tangible self and gotten tangled up with the hypothetical one. He and Noire were in the same positions, more or less, when she came back with a dark-haired man at her side, loudly explaining to her companion what had happened to put them in this exact situation.

"This is what happens when you rely on others to get what you want," he said once he'd heard the gist of the story, turning his back on everyone without so much as a greeting for the visitors. "Now if you would give me a moment, I was taking care of some things before you interrupted me and I would like to finish them."

"Seriously, Gerome? First time people see us in a long while and you're going to choose wyverns over them?" Severa grabbed onto his arm but immediately let go of it when he started to walk away, her jaw dropping at the act of defiance he'd just performed against her. "Sheesh, fine then! Don't get snippy next time I don't try and include you in something!"

Her attention when right back to the others, seeing that Laurent was still staring off into space as his mind worked in mysterious ways, and that distraction had caused him to let his stranglehold on Noire loosen up just enough for her to duck underneath his arm. "I'm not sure what I did to deserve that, I was just telling you about babies, wasn't I?" Noire asked, back to her normal self, and Severa nodded in return. "Okay, well…oh, it looks like Laurent isn't paying attention so I can make this quick."

"What's his deal about this, he's really weird about this whole topic isn't he? Not like him to be so strange when we're just talking about things." Severa wrapped one of her long pigtails around her hand as she continued looking on Laurent, a bit concerned that perhaps his mind had malfunctioned and he wasn't thinking about anything at all. "Has he always been like that and I never noticed, or what?"
"It's a new thing, don't worry. I don't know what caused it, but ever since we finished his search for knowledge he's been like this." Smiling innocently, Noire tilted her head as she looked at Severa, waiting for her attention to turn to her so that she could talk while knowing she had an audience. The attention eventually came, and the two ladies broke into a conversation about their friends remaining in Ylisstol and the rumors surrounding them about possible children, all of which were completely unproven but needed to be addressed at some point or another.

During their talk, Gerome came back into the room and, disinterested with the topic the ladies were speaking on, tried to pull Laurent's attention back to reality. "Been a while since we last saw one another, hm?" he asked, tapping Laurent's shoulder but getting no response. "You're alive, aren't you? Or are you ignoring me?"

Even though he wasn't talking, Laurent was in fact responding, by looking at Gerome's hair and beginning to factor that into some of his baby-minded calculations. But after a few moments of doing so, he remembered that the dark hair he saw wasn't natural and was instead a dye job that had been maintained much longer than had been necessary. "I was considering some things, there was no intention of ignoring anyone in my actions," he explained, hoping he hadn't missed much while thinking. "It is a pleasure to see you once more, my friend."

"Same to you," Gerome said with a curt nod, retreating back a couple steps now that the person he was talking to was paying attention to the world around him. "You and Noire choosing to live nearby is preferable to almost anyone else, I hope you know. You two at least know how to keep your distance when necessary."

"With you, distance is always necessary." It sounded like it was a harsh statement, but Laurent and Gerome both knew it to be true: the wyvern valley was a perfect place to live that wasn't brimming with other people, something that someone as isolated as Gerome wanted in life. The few people that were in his home right then were all he could ever ask for, if even that. "And I assure you, we will try our best to make visits here as infrequent as possible, but…" Laurent let himself fall silent as he saw how eager and excited Noire and Severa were to be having a one-on-one conversation, and he cleared his throat to resume speaking. "Perhaps the two of them will be a bit of a hindrance on that."

"If they do start to be annoying, I'll just go out on my own. There's a world of wyverns out there, Minerva and I could enjoy some time among them." Just talking about the possibility of the two ladies spending more time together had Gerome sounding disgusted, but that was the loner in him talking. He liked having new faces around just as much as Severa did, even if he wasn't going to be as verbally thankful for them.

Even with knowing that, it was hard for Laurent to continue speaking with him, especially since he was actively hearing the ladies talking about children (which was giving Severa the exact answers she'd been looking for). He so badly wanted to step in and start voicing his own thoughts on the matter, but doing so would cause him to lose his position as a straight-man who was responsible when compared with the world around him.

Not only that, but admitting that he was interested in the prospects of having a child around would start different conversations that he was positive he didn't want to hear. Never before had he thought about the process of child-making outside of a scientific mindset, and he knew that it'd be the first thing presented to him if he were to mention his interest. That was a secret he was going to have to keep with him until his dying day.

"What do you propose the big deal is about…all that," he asked Gerome, waving a hand towards the ladies and their animated conversation. If he could play his interest off as interest in their reactions rather than the topic, he might have a chance to talk about it without revealing his interest, he thought. "The children of our friends, or how everyone is rushing to settle down and procreate, I mean."

"There isn't harm in rushing to settle down, Severa and I did that to live here uninterrupted," he replied, stepping closer once more yet still keeping his distance, so they could discuss without having to talk too loudly. "However, the children thing, that's news to me. People we know, that we fought alongside, are having children? So soon?"

"It appears so. Noire and I were not lucky enough to meet with anyone who could confirm or deny this rumor, but that may have been done to prevent us from knowing the truth." Shrugging, Laurent took a second to think about how, had he been able to meet someone with a child of their own he could have asked them if he could borrow the child at some point, and as the idea crossed his mind the corners of his mouth ticked upward, amusement in the concept clearly evident.

It was in that moment that Noire happened to look at him rather than at Severa and she grinned at his pleased expression. "Laurent! Didn't you say that you think it's silly that everyone's maybe having kids already while we're still young?" she asked, forcing him to straighten up and pretend like he didn't think it was a good idea for his own reasons.

"Er, yes I did say that upon first hearing the rumors, why do you ask?"

Her grin grew a bit more, causing him to shift his weight on his feet as he tried figuring out what she was getting at, to no avail. "I was just telling Severa that none of us here have to worry about jumping on that idea, because we have other things to worry about in life that isn't having kids. She thought me saying that was hilarious for some reason, kinda like she didn't believe you, and…I thought I should check to make sure she was wrong about that."

"Something about that doesn't add up to me, but who am I to question it?" Now Severa was looking at him, winking in his direction before she walked away from Noire and went straight to Gerome's side, wrapping him in a hug he clearly didn't want. "What matters is that we aren't playing that stupid game everyone else is, we're going to live here and protect this place from anyone who dares harm it."

"Something doesn't add up? But what?" Noire completely missed the display of affection as she tried to figure out what Severa was getting at, and looking at Laurent to find answers wasn't helping him with hiding things. How had Severa managed to size him and what he thought up so quickly, and why had she just opened that door to Noire after he'd tried to keep it closed? They'd moved out here because it was lonely, it was quiet, there weren't going to be distractions from his studies yet there were going to be friends, and now he was almost wishing they'd stayed in Ylisstol and waited to see if the rumors were true.

Instead of voicing any of that, he merely shook his head at Noire and said, "I have not the slightest of clues, Severa must be trying to stir up trouble as always." Punctuating it with a dry laugh, he came off as joking when he was actually voicing the honest truth about the situation, but Noire just wasn't meant to know that truth, not then and not ever.

---

Keeping the truth from her proved to be a lot harder than he'd expected it to be, which was an unusual situation for Laurent as he normally found most things to be easier than expected. The idea he'd had was at the front of his mind at most times, and there would be moments where he and Noire would be deep in conversation and he would have to pause so that he could look away from her, wordlessly telling himself to focus on what they were saying, not what that voice in his mind was saying. He couldn't bring up the idea of wanting a child around to her, she would take it horribly and overreact to however he worded it.

Yet the desire to at least throw the suggestion out there remained strong, becoming more prominent in his mind with every passing day. To try and prevent it from getting out accidentally, he began wrapping himself up tighter and tighter in his studies, trading correspondence with his parents about things he could help them with, isolating himself from every person he was in physical contact with. Noire wasn't pleased with how he was now completely avoiding her, especially as they shared their home and he was treating her as if she wasn't there, but she could only yell at him so many times (and force him to remember that he was strangely attracted to her yelling) before he grew immune to it.

Frustrated that she was losing her ability to get through to him, Noire was starting to catch on that he was trying to keep something from her, and she wasn't going to take that lightly. She figured she would have to do something drastic to get him to pay attention to her again, and after discussing it with Severa over the course of a few days, she was starting to come to terms with what she'd have to do to get Laurent to pay attention to her again. This was, of course, because Severa was pretty sure she knew what was eating at Laurent, and while she wasn't so rude as to throw around the secrets of someone she could generally tolerate, she was also protective of Noire's feelings and wanted to make her happy.

At noticing that Noire was spending more time out of the house, and therefore away from him so that he could really focus on what he wanted, Laurent came to the conclusion, based on the exchanges with his parents as well as what that inner voice was telling him, that some time away and working with children would be good for his mental state. It was fortunate for him that his parents ran an orphanage that he could assist at for a little while, or at least until the biting need for a child in his life passed him by, and his parents were more than willing to let him stay with them for a while in order to let this happen.

He needed to break this news to Noire somehow, that he was going to go to the orphanage as an assistant, but doing that would require explaining to her why that was. She wasn't stupid, she knew that he wouldn't run back home simply because his parents asked for him to, so the time of keeping his secret away from her was having to come to a forced conclusion, completely against his will and wishes. Little did he know that she was already figuring out what he wanted, or at least some form of it, and she was going to have to call it to their attention because he clearly wasn't going to.

This led to a late-night, just before they were going to tuck into bed for the evening, conversation that started with them both looking at each other, clear intent for conversation in their eyes. At seeing Noire so determined to tell him something, Laurent felt nothing but fear; at seeing his determination she was excited that maybe he was going to come clean after all. "There is something I need to discuss with you," he said, right as she opened her mouth to say something as well, and his words caused her to giggle nervously.

"I feel the same way, actually," she replied, fidgeting with her hands in front of her. "It's kind of a big something I have to talk to you about, which I'm sure yours is too, so…" She gave him the strongest smile she could muster in the moment, her nerves getting to her more than they normally did. "Maybe we could say our thing at the same time, since it should be the same thing?"

He took in a sharp breath, slowly exhaling it through his nose as he considered what this meant for them. If she knew what he wanted, and was taking it this well, then the next step would be for them to start looking around for someone to loan them a child for a little bit, which he could easily do once he was at the orphanage. With that in mind, he nodded, looking at her expectantly to wait for more directions. She was standing with her mouth sans that forced smile yet still slightly open, preparing herself for what she needed to say, and he knew that he was going to have to take control.

Raising a hand with three fingers outstretched, he lowered one, then two, and finally, after hesitating only minimally (and making sure that Noire was focused on his hand and not his mouth), he closed the hand into a fist and words flew. He told her, "I have found myself wanting a child around," right as she said, "I think we should start a family," and the reactions they gave to the other's statement were split-second and genuine—she was thrilled that he really was thinking along the same lines she was, whereas he wasn't thinking that at all and was mortified that she had jumped to that conclusion.

"Aw, so it's settled then?" she asked, throwing all caution to the wind as she nearly tackled him to the ground in a forceful hug. "I know we're probably not the, uh, best people to be parents, but I think if we work together we can make it work perfectly!"

"You misunderstand me, that isn't what…I don't…Noire, I said 'a' child, not 'our own' child. I want to have the luxury to return the child to its parents after I have spent my time with it, not be saddled with its care and treatment for the rest of its life." He hated knocking her down while she was so happy, but he didn't want things to get away from him until it was too late and too damaging to stop them. She immediately got off of him, her demeanor souring instantly, and he knew he was about to get an earful from her about how he'd tricked her or whatever argument her feisty side was going to throw around. That wasn't going to change the firmness in his stance, no matter how hard she tried: he wasn't going to bend to her will simply because she got a little angry.

She verbally berated and threatened him for a few minutes before switching back to her calm and docile self, apologizing that she'd gotten out of hand at the rejection. "I just started to think that maybe it'd be good for us, since a lot of our old friends have done it and I don't want to be left out from stuff forever," she explained, neglecting to mention the manipulation that a certain childless friend of theirs had forced her to believe in (something that Laurent knew had to have happened to get to this point). "But you're right, being able to return the child's best for us, isn't it?"

"Between myself and my focus on studies and you and your inability to keep one personality at all times, any child permanently kept within our home would be subjected to nothing but horrors they don't deserve. I cannot, in good conscience, allow for a child to be raised solely between us." Adjusting his glasses as he looked at Noire, seeing her accepting yet crestfallen face staring back at him, he let out a deep sigh. "However, I suppose I could look into a foster system of sorts while at the orphanage with my parents, if that would please you."

"The orphanage? When were you going to tell me we're visiting your parents?"

He cringed at her question, knowing that the response was going to upset her further. "I said nothing about us both going, Noire. The invitation was for myself only, for the purpose of assisting my parents with various tasks in exchange for me getting to spend time with the children there. I shall only be gone for a handful of months at most."

"Months? Laurent, you're going to be leaving me for months?" Her bottom lip jutting out, it seemed that Noire was about to start crying rather than going back to being a verbal menace, but at the first tear she started laughing with a harsh tone and he knew that he was in for a second round of the berating. "How dare you think that's appropriate? I bared my heart to you and you're leaving to visit your parents and stupid children that aren't ours! Give me what I want, damn it!"

Without flinching at her rude tone, he looked her straight in the eyes and calmly told her, "We can resume this conversation after I have returned home with a clear mind on the matter, but for right now, there will be no children in this home of our own flesh and blood. End of discussion." To drive home his point, he got into bed without another word to her, not a proper goodnight or an apology for how he'd "betrayed" her on their different feelings on the matter at hand.

When he left a few days later, they hadn't bothered clearing the air between them on the subject and she was sure that they never were going to, which wasn't optimal but it was what she'd expected to happen. He didn't want something and he wasn't going to go back on his decision without serious consideration, and maybe his time spent with his parents would give him room to reconsider what he'd said, even if him changing his stance wasn't likely in the slightest.

Even Severa, once she'd heard about what had happened, was sure that there was no changing anything about the situation, something that she felt slightly sorry for. "If I had known he wasn't actually wanting a kid, I wouldn't have told you he was and gotten your hopes up about it," she said in apology the first time Noire came over to discuss the events of that argument. "When he gets back, I guess you can suggest other options to him if he's still being stubborn. He said no kids from both of you, so what if…?"

"I'm not having someone else's kid, it's Laurent's or no kid at all." Before the topic had been brought up with her in the very same room they were currently talking in, Noire hadn't ever thought about the idea of starting a family, but now that she'd entertained it once she wasn't keen on letting it go. "He's going to get what he wants, whichever option it is."

"I understand that, but hear me out on this." Severa's eyes were alight with excitement as she started explaining her new plan to Noire, as a way of making up for the fact that her previous idea had backfired spectacularly. That excitement didn't transfer over to Noire, not when she felt like she was being told things that she didn't want to hear at all. But at the same time, if Laurent did come home and didn't change how he felt, maybe having a back-up plan was necessary in order to make things right.

---

There was no doubt about it: being gone for a few months to spend time at the orphanage was nothing but a hindrance on how Laurent felt about everything. The kids there were too old, too talkative and understanding, to soothe the call that his heart was making, and despite his best efforts he left with the exact same feeling of needing a child in his life that he'd had when he showed up. That wasn't the only thing he left with, as he did make plans for a return to do scientific studies with his mother in a month's time, but that was the most important piece of the puzzle.

Noire was not going to be pleased that he'd been gone for so long to come back the exact same, nor was she going to be happy about him turning around and leaving again so soon. He was going to have to make real efforts to convince her that everything was fine as it was, and he wasn't sure if he'd be able to do it properly. She was going to be upset with him the moment he walked in their front door, and nothing short of submitting to her was going to solve any problems—but he had no intentions of submitting. He did not want a child of his own, no matter how badly he wanted a child around, and he wasn't going to let her talk him into seeing things his way.

The best case scenario would be that someone else had decided to procreate in his absence and he'd be able to borrow their child soon enough. Worst case would be that Noire would be annoyed to extremes with him and walk out of his life, and there were a lot of in-betweens that he didn't want to give the honor of thinking about. As he was sure that nothing would have happened, though, because if it had someone would have written him a letter or even come to visit him where he was, that meant that what he was returning to was somewhere in that middle-ground he was trying to avoid.

Finding the house empty when he got back to it, Laurent's first action was to make sure everything that belonged there was still there, minus the other person living there. Aside from some of her clothes and exactly what he'd taken away with him, everything was as it should have been, a good sign that she wasn't already fed up with him and his reluctance to do as she wished. However, it did raise the issue of not knowing where it was she was at the moment, or when she would return.

Deciding that more travel wasn't right for him in the moment, he began to return things to how they were before he left, putting all his belongings away and starting on some new project to make up for lost time. The day slipped into night before he realized it, and soon he was stuck sitting there in a lonely home, his research and studying his only companion. "It may have been in my best interest to search for her," he mused as he started putting away the things he'd gotten out in the time since his return, cleaning the house to exactly as he'd found it that day. "No matter, she will certainly come home when she wants to, there is no need to stress about her whereabouts at all times."

But when she didn't come back the next day, or even the following one, worry started to grow within him; what if he'd been abandoned by her in his absence and she'd disappeared without bothering to take everything she owned? There was very little he could do in order to find her, living so far from other people and knowing that there was a large world out there that she could have escaped to. She wouldn't have gone running back to anywhere her parents would have found her, which limited some places but not many, but as he thought about the possibilities of where she'd gone he had a fairly solid guess as to where it ultimately would have been.

That led to him making a visit to the house of a couple dear friends, just to check to see if she was possibly there, and what he found upon arrival was the exact opposite of what he'd been expecting. He'd figured it'd just be Severa and Gerome there, living life exactly as they wanted to, so when he came to the front door and saw giant rabbit creatures running through the valley behind the house, he knew that there were more people around than he ever thought possible. Noire was there, inside the kitchen at the table with Severa and in deep discussion with her, and when she saw him walk in she gasped in shock, unaware he'd have come looking for her once he came home.

Their reunion was cut short by a smirking Severa, who looked at them almost embracing and asked, "So, when're you two going to get to making a baby, huh?" That put a damper on what they had been about to do, him feeling awkward at the suggestion and Noire knowing that he wasn't a fan of it so she went back to sitting away from him. "Come on you two, you know you have to eventually, you both clearly want it. What better time than after one of you getting home after being gone for months?"

"I would rather you never make that suggestion again," he flatly replied, taking a seat next to Noire and trying to ignore as she scooted her chair away from his. "What we choose to do with our lives is nothing for you to trifle yourself with, and your idea of what we should do would be nothing but harmful to us all."

"Keep telling yourself that, I suppose you'll realize how dumb it is eventually." Shrugging off his rebuttal as if he hadn't said anything at all, Severa rose from her chair and left the room, leaving the couple alone for a few moments, time spent in silence as neither of them felt comfortable addressing the other while not in private. They did exchange wordless looks between them that were indicating a return home for proper conversation, but before either of them could make moves to leave Severa came back, joined by not just her husband but three other people, two of which had long, dangling ears that showed their status as Taguel and the third with pointed ears indicative of manakete blood. "Now that you're here, Laurent, I guess we really do have the 'we don't exist in this timeline and probably never will' party under one roof."

"I don't know why you keep calling us that when you know most everyone here will exist someday," Nah said, staying by the doorway as she'd been the last person to enter the room. "Now if you want to force that issue, I'm sure there's enough people here who aren't guaranteed that existence to make it happen, but leave me out of it." As she was speaking, she was wrapping her fingers around one of her long braids of pristine white hair, almost as if she was thinking about something while talking. That became evident when she froze and, with a shudder, added, "I'd rather not have just thought about why we should leave me out, but here we are anyway."

"And leave us out of that too, just because our father in this timeline's missing and presumed dead doesn't mean he's actually dead!" Looking from his sister, to who'd been speaking before him, to Severa (who was rolling her eyes at him), Yarne paused after his exclamation, only to tighten his hands into fists and mutter something under his breath that no one was meant to hear.

The only one capable of hearing it was his dear sister, who hadn't been paying attention to him as she'd been watching Nah the entire time. "I don't think anyone'll appreciate knowing you think of them that way," Morgan teased, flipping her head just enough to send a long ear knocking into her brother's. "Let's just let Severa do her silly thing and enjoy being in the company of a lot of people for once."

Yarne wasn't completely on-board with what he was being told, but he also hadn't expected anyone to respond to him so he merely fell silent and went along with what his sister said. That opened up the conversation back to Nah, who was pursing her lips as she looked at Morgan. "Oh, so when it's just me you're with it's not enough, you need more than just that."

"I didn't say that, now did I?" There was still the teasing tone to her voice, but Morgan had shifted to being more sultry, leaning in towards the small dragon girl to get some kind of physical response. The sigh and display of affection that followed were exactly what she'd been looking for, judging by how it shut her up just like her response before had shut her brother up.

"Now that that's over with…" Severa shook her head, not liking that what she'd said had been so derailed and talked over. "I didn't mean anything by saying that none of us will exist, obviously most of us will unless our parents are dead or whatever." That comment was most definitely pointed at the two rabbit-people, but neither of them were paying attention by that point (or if they were, they weren't going to vocalize it). "But since we're all here, who wants to do some gossiping about everyone who isn't around? Specifically about, oh, I don't know, babies or something?"

Now she was pointing her words towards Laurent, who was fairly certain these kinds of conversations had been happening in his absence with this same group of people. No one seemed to be taking the bait right then, though, so perhaps his assumption was incorrect and they hadn't been happening at all. "You have a one-track mind sometimes, Severa," Gerome grumbled, glancing towards the door as if he could escape the topic by running far away. "No one here's interested in that."

"I'm certain that at least one someone is, and I know other someones have information they can share to get that one someone to open their mouth and get plans started." Batting her eyelashes as she tried to get back on his good side, Severa stopped after she realized that she wasn't getting anywhere and went back to trying to convince people to talk with her own voice. "Come on, seriously? All of you, except maybe Noire since she's been here with me this whole time, not a single one of you has any news from anyone?"

"Why would we? None of us want to talk to any of them," Nah replied, her face alight with color as Morgan had started draping herself over her. "Anyone we want to talk to is definitely in this room right now, right?"

"If you're trying to get me to speak on certain matters, you're failing at it." After everyone had given their nods of agreement to the previous statement, Laurent had figured that he was safe to speak, but the thing was that everyone knew what Nah was going to say was true; they didn't know that he was actually trying to hide something. That opened up the questions of what it was he was hiding, why he was hiding it from friends, why he wasn't going to share it, and while he was drowning in those questions he happened to see the smug, proud look on Severa's face—something he wished he could smack off of her.

"Please, everyone, you're making Laurent uncomfortable and I want you to stop." Noire didn't usually chime in on these conversations in her normal voice, and hearing her not yelling at everyone to burn for eternity for bringing discomfort for her significant other was enough to stop people mid-sentence. "Thank you, he doesn't deserve being the target when it comes to talking about these things. He's made his stance known and we need to respect it."

Appreciating that she stood up for him like that, Laurent went to thank her personally for what she'd said, but he was cut off by Severa, who was trying her best to be respectful while also pushing her opinion. "I know his stance is known or whatever, but you know, and I know, and everyone else here knows, that he'd do anything to talk about babies. Didn't he, you know, just leave you for months to go spent time with kids?"

"He did, but—"

"And isn't this the first time you've seen him since he came back? Wouldn't you want some kind of grand reunion with him?" Giving as large of a smile as she could physically manage, Severa winked at Noire. "Come on, tell me what you want. I'm all ears."

"You…you're…you are using what I said to you privately against me!" Now Noire was yelling, her voice raised much louder than it previously had been. "I told you that as a best friend thing, not as a thing you could tell everyone when you wanted to blackmail me! You're going to pay for this!"

Rather than deal with the fallout of what he'd just heard, Laurent chose to step away from everyone and head for the front door, leaving in his wake all those people who'd gathered to, as far as he knew, try and convince him to act on this idea of a grand reunion. That wasn't anything he wanted, and had Noire asked about it when they were alone he might have considered it, but now that it was a public idea and everyone was going to push for it to relate back to the other idea hanging around, he wanted no part of it. He made it as far as right outside the house before he realized someone was following him, but when he went to tell them to leave him be he saw it was Gerome, looking just as unamused as he probably felt.

"Doing the right thing here, I see," he remarked, as Laurent stopped walking long enough for him to catch up to him. They started down the path out of the valley and away from the house together, entirely in silence aside from the sound of their footsteps. The next words spoken weren't until the other house was visible in the distance, Gerome clearing his throat before he said anything. "You missed a lot while you were gone, but none of it was like this. It was them talking about the others and what they're doing. Never about you."

"That's reassuring but now that your wife has chosen to put my personal wishes out there for everyone, I feel that they will start talking about me a lot more." Sighing, Laurent began to wonder what the probability was of his parents letting him go back on a permanent basis, rather than just for a visit and some work. Going back in a month's time would be waiting a month too long to get away from the mess he'd fallen into, he felt. "You're quite possibly the only person here I can trust with anything," he admitted, looking to Gerome with a saddened expression. "How tragic, that I cannot put my faith into the woman I love any longer."

"Noire's not acting out of malice towards you and your choices, she's just talking to the one person who hears her out. It happens that the person who'll listen happens to love making issues out of everything." Stopping his forward progression, Gerome looked towards the sky, raising his hand to use it to judge how long there was until the sun would be going down. "I should return home before everyone comes to follow, if I'd thought to bring Minerva we could spend longer discussing this."

"I understand, you do not want everyone chasing you down simply because you failed to return before sundown." The expression on his face didn't change, but the feeling of loneliness in his body grew larger at the sound of his friend turning back, and Laurent knew that he needed to get home so that he could pack up and get away from everything right away. There was no time to delay: he was no longer in a good mental position while being so isolated with a so-called friend as the closest neighbor.

At some point in the night, while he was working to get things collected and organized for quick movement, the front door opened and Noire came in, looking distraught and sounding like she'd ran the whole way to come home. It was proven that she had, in fact, done exactly that, and the moment she found Laurent she wrapped her arms around him and buried cold, tear-covered cheeks into his shoulder. "I can't lose you," she cried, sobbing into him like he was a pillow. "I don't want to lose you, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me and losing you would hurt me more than anything."

Sighing, he accepted that what he was doing was a lost cause now that she was around, and he carefully maneuvered himself so that he could use a hand to cup her chin. "You worry about losing me but never consider what I would want from you," he told her, feeling her tears still running down her face and now into his hand. "What happened earlier was unnecessary and whose fault was it?"

"M-mine, for trusting Severa with my thoughts. I know this." She sniffled, her face looking pitiful as she stared into his eyes with her tear-brimmed ones. "But she wants me to be happy, just like you should! Don't you love me? Don't you want me to be happy?"

It was a loaded question and Laurent knew that however he answered it, Noire wasn't going to be happy with it. Yes, he did want her to be happy, but he didn't want to do what he knew she wanted to make her happy, and if he continued refusing to do that he would only upset her further. But he couldn't tell her that no, he didn't want her to be happy, because that would be a huge lie and he wouldn't be able to live with himself for lying to her in such a manner. He was stuck between two bad options and he had to pick the least destructive of them, without much time to think about the consequences.

Although he had spent quite a bit of time already thinking about the consequences of what he was going to pick. "I do want you to be happy," he answered, letting his fingers gently tap against her chin, "but I am afraid that what you insist you need for your happiness isn't anything I can commit to, for the sake of my own happiness."

"It would make you happy too, you said it yourself before you left that you want a child around." Through her tears Noire tried to smile, but only managed to upset herself further and she choked out a loud cry. "Please, I promise it'll work out for both of us if we go for it! All of our friends will support us, they'll understand what we're doing and why it's best for us, they really will!"

"You have far too much faith in their loyalty, but…" He was wavering in his stance, but he knew this day would come eventually and now his words and actions were going to have to be at odds with one another. "If you insist we need to do this, there's no harm in proceeding to attempt to start a family."

It wasn't a "yes we will do this", but that was how Noire took it. Her face lit up, her crying subsided (even though she was still giving small hiccups from how upset she'd gotten), and she looked like she was about to say something excitedly, until she noticed that Laurent didn't look nearly as thrilled as she was. The corners of her mouth pointed downward in time with her eyebrows furrowing, and before he could even react to the mood whiplash she'd just experienced, she was barking out for him to prepare for some romantic time together, complete with enough degrading language that he was admittedly a bit aroused by to set the mood.

This wasn't how he'd wanted things to go by any means, but he wasn't going to fight with her any longer on it. Whatever was going to happen to them, whether it was her way or his, was now out of their hands and firmly in the hands of chance.

---

After the decision had been made, much of their free time was spent discussing what it could mean for them, or what could come from it. For as excited and insistent as she was to start a family, it became increasingly clear that Noire didn't have the slightest of clue as to what that entailed (minus the obvious and well-documented parts). Laurent had done his research and was more than willing to let her know specific answers to questions she had, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't find some humor in seeing her eyes go wide at some of the things she was signing herself up for.

Thinking of it that way—that they were still in the process of signing up for this—made things a bit more acceptable for Laurent, as he was still not completely sure that this was what he wanted. He couldn't back out once they'd started trying, though, not unless he wanted to have crushed Noire's spirit entirely, so that was set in stone, but if nothing ever came of their attempts then he wasn't at fault. Unfortunately, he wasn't going to know if something were to happen right away, as he still had a visit back home to do experiments with his mother he was committed to.

"It will not be a lengthy time away, then I will be back with you," he assured Noire, after he'd packed his things. "Once I inform my mother as to what we are planning, she may allow for an earlier return, but with her…you never can be quite sure what she will do."

"Or you could just stay here and tell her in a letter or something that you can't go because you need to be here for me." Hanging her head, Noire hoped Laurent would say something in agreement with her, but when she heard him sigh she knew he wasn't going to. "Okay, okay, you go do your research stuff. I'll just stay here, nice and safe."

"If it were logistically plausible to bring you along I would, but it was not cleared with my parents beforehand and I would hate to force them to accommodate us both for the visit without prior warning." After making sure he had everything in his bag that he felt he'd need for the trip, Laurent looked at Noire, cupping her chin to pull her to looking back at him like he'd done the night they'd decided what they were going to do. She wasn't crying, but she was trying her best to not lock eyes with him. "You have friends around, just like the last time. You will survive this and then we will be back together."

"I know that!" she snapped, jerking her head back and out of his grasp. "Do you think I'm stupid? You've left before and come back, I know you aren't leaving forever! You're just leaving when there's something we both want and you know it!"

Sighing again, he closed his eyes and thought about how to respond to that to get less of an angered reaction when she spoke again. There were many things he could have said in that moment, but none of them felt appropriate to be said, so he chose to leave it as it was. With nothing more than a goodbye and one last loving embrace, he grabbed his bag and started out for the nearest town so that he could get on his way.

Noire was left to sit in her frustration and feeling of abandonment, which she usually handled by leaving home for herself. Something told her that going over to visit with Severa and Gerome would result in her just getting more upset about what had happened, the lack of certainty as to what was going on, the reality that she was alone again for some amount of time. She needed to stay home and alone for a little while to work things out in her mind before she dragged anyone else into what was going on, unless she wanted to make everything more of a big deal than it already was.

She managed to make it a single day before she was over at Severa's house to talk to her, the need for some kind of comforting conversation outweighing the fact that she needed time to think about things. Going over there in such a fragile mental state was a horrible thing to do, especially since Severa was exactly the kind of person who would manipulate someone feeling upset—and manipulate Noire she did, into telling her exactly what was going on. The revelation felt like a well-deserved victory for her, and with every word of (sometimes kind of explicit) explanation she felt herself becoming more and more excited for what was supposedly happening.

"The two of you finally went ahead and accepted your fate as the next pair of all of us to make that leap," she said once Noire had spilled everything on her mind, stifling laughter as she did. "You're precious, but you're also dumb. Why would you waste your time trying to start a family with him? You know he's going to hold back."

"Hold back?" Noire repeated, Severa nodding at her for it. "What do you mean? He's as open to it as I am, he's not going to sabotage everything…"

A single laugh escaped Severa's lips before she covered her mouth to compose herself. "That's what he wants you to think, but seriously? What kind of guy do you take him for? He probably can't actually have kids, that's why he's letting you get your hopes up for it. You're going to come away from this disappointed, unless you—" Her grip on her own mouth tightened as she reconsidered finishing her statement, but she eventually dropped the hand and continued on. "—well, unless you decide you're going to trap him in his own lies."

"Hold on a second, his lies?" Something didn't sit right with her about this, and Noire wasn't going to let it continue until she had answers. "Is that why he never wanted to say that he wanted his own kid, that he just wanted a kid around? Because he can't have kids? Are you telling me that I want something I can't have?" When she didn't get an immediate response, the loud and angry side came out, screaming, "You strung me along to make me want something you think I can't get! Why did you do that? You deserve to suffer for your insolence and inconsiderate nature!"

"Hold on a second, I strung you along to get him admitting to wanting it too, so that you could do something about it. I'm sure he wouldn't complain about having a kid around that's yours but not his." A silence fell over them, as Noire calmed back down from her quick outburst and started processing what Severa had just said to her.

Her mouth moved as if she was trying to speak, but she wasn't saying any words, merely mouthing them. The thought had never occurred to her that Laurent was so specific in his stance because of a physical incapability, but now that it was presented to her she was going to have to work with it. "What would I do in that case? I'm not going to make him feel bad about this, I can't ask him if I can have someone else's kid for him, he'll get hurt that I didn't give a miracle a chance."

"I wasn't going to suggest this, but if you're so concerned about hurting his feelings you can always do it without his consent. Let him think you're having his kid, actually be having someone else's. I'd offer Gerome up to you for the task if you wanted." Shrugging as if she hadn't just suggested her friend use her own husband as a tool for cheating, Severa didn't allow for Noire to say anything about the absurdity of the situation before she gave a different option. "Or, since we both know someone who'd love to pass down his bloodline to a kid, maybe you could, well, help him out."

"W-what?" Noire's jaw had dropped a bit, and aside from the one word she'd gotten out, nothing else was coming to her. She was shocked to hear such a suggestion, especially in light of what had already been thrown out there, and she knew that if she was going to make that kind of decision it would have to be after a long discussion with Laurent, with his full consent on whatever she chose to do. "I…couldn't, Severa. It'd be wrong."

Shaking her head, Severa corrected, "No, getting strung along's wrong, doing what you need to do to make yourself have what you want is right. But if you're going to turn down the idea, that's your loss. You'll get what you want eventually, my way, it's just a matter of doing it now or later."

"I'm not going to be doing it at all!" she retaliated, her heartbeat picking up as she felt herself growing angry. "I'm not some kind of horrible woman who sleeps around with others just to get something out of it! I'm loyal and loving and I'm going to remain such!" After letting out a long, piercing scream that could have effectively raised the dead if needed, she stormed out of the house in the valley and made it most of the way back to her own before she realized that acting like this basically signed her up for spending the whole duration of Laurent's trip at home alone.

She couldn't turn back and apologize to Severa for what she'd just done, that would make it seem like she was reconsidering what had been said. At the same time, though, being alone for such a long period of time wasn't going to be good for her, by the time Laurent came home she'd be out of her mind and basically clinging to him. It was a tough decision to make, but her loyalty to the one she loved won out, if only barely over her dedication to her friend.

It became a decision that was pointless within days, though, thanks to the appearance of someone at Noire's front door that wouldn't normally ever show up somewhere on their own. "Er, this is going to be really weird and I'm sorry," Yarne said once the door had been opened for him, "but I can't trust Morgan or Nah to help me out anymore and Severa's too weird about these kinds of things to be useful. You're my only hope right now!"

"Only…hope?" Noire repeated, having heard Severa's name and flashing back to the conversation she'd last had with her, which had specifically referenced Yarne. "I'm afraid I don't understand what you need from me…"

"Right, I didn't exactly explain myself." Taking a few deep breaths, his long ears twitching as he entered the house, Yarne broke into the needed explanation without any sort of hesitation. "My sister, she's been helping me try to find a good girlfriend, since I'm the only single one out of all our friends, but lately she's been focused more on her own girlfriend than on getting me one. Like I said, Severa's weird about this and I can't ask her to help, everyone else isn't anywhere near here and I'm not going somewhere alone to try and find someone, so you're really it for helping me."

This sounded innocent enough of a request, something that Noire considered herself to be thankful about. "I don't have much else to do while Laurent's away, I suppose I could be of some help in all of this," she replied with a small smile, knowing that not turning him away was going to make him very happy. "What exactly is it that you need me to do?"

"I need you to come with me into all the nearest towns and help me with the ladies! I'm not exactly the most confident or attractive, I need all the help I can get!" Noire was fairly certain that if Yarne wasn't clearly a rabbit monster, he'd be able to get ladies much easier, but she wasn't going to bring that up when he was asking for something she could actually do. He could tell that she was thinking his request over, but he wasn't quite done with making it so he tacked on, "Also, if I get caught by them doing this without their help I'm gonna get chewed out by Morgan forever so if I could stay here with you I'd love that."

"You need to stay here too?" That wasn't something that Noire was planning for as she was considering accepting what he'd said, but she knew that there was a small spare bed in the house for the very reason of allowing some friend or traveler to stay somewhere safe. "I…guess I can let you do that. And I can try helping you with what you need, I can't say I'll be as good as your sister but I can try my best."

That was the exact answer Yarne was looking for, judging by how he nearly threw her to the ground as he tackled her in his excitement at her acceptance. Over the course of that day they discussed what it was that he needed her to do, and the following days were spent going to towns close enough to travel to without issue and seeing if there were any ladies that were interested in getting to know him. Most places they were unable to find anyone, and when they did find someone who was fine with going to an evening meal with him they'd book a room at a local inn and stay there overnight, oftentimes having to share a single bed as they talked about how he was inevitably rejected by the woman he had taken out.

The one nice thing Noire could bring herself to say about sharing a bed with Yarne was that he definitely kept her warm at night when she'd get cold, but that was the only real positive. Once they'd gone to all the nearby towns and called their endeavor a massive failure, they returned to her house for good, and she had to make him promise that he wouldn't talk about their sleeping arrangements while they'd been out. As he knew it had been completely platonic, just-between-friends sharing of the bed, he didn't see the harm in telling anyone about if it they asked—then he asked if they could share the bed in her home while she was still alone there.

It was a tempting offer, she really had liked staying warm overnight, but there was no way that Noire could let herself betray Laurent in their own bed, even if it was a friendly act. She was expecting Yarne to take that rejection and leave the house to rejoin his sister and her girlfriend, but he reminded Noire that she didn't like being alone and that he'd stay around like a good friend and keep her company until her lover was back. That did mean that he slept in that spare bed while he was there; or, at least, that he was supposed to sleep there. He ended up getting into the bed with Noire after she woke up one night from a nightmare, screaming out curses and wishing death and destruction on things in the world around her, and he chose to calm her down by giving her something to cuddle as she tried sleeping. It was done out of the need to make her comfortable, and she knew that well enough to not even feel bad about it in the morning.

For the rest of the time she was going to be alone, Yarne was there for her every night, keeping her company even when the voices in her head started bothering her. His presence was calming, something that she appreciated greatly in a time of loneliness, but she'd started to fear that he'd been set up by someone to try and convince her to give him what he wanted, which was someone to love and start a family with. That topic was never brought up between them however, so if he wanted that or not from her she didn't actually know, and she didn't want to assume it to be true.

The day Laurent came back from his trip, it was mid-afternoon when he walked into his house and, rather than finding Noire there waiting for him, he found Yarne sleeping in his bed, acting like he belonged there. "Is someone going to explain to me why there is a Taguel here?" he asked, clearing his throat before he spoke and hoping that between the two differing sounds someone would jump out and explain things. "The last I checked, the woman I am bound to is very clearly human."

The bait worked, the noises striking enough to Yarne's sensitive ears to get him to shoot up in the bed. "Oh hey Laurent! Good to see you're back!" he said before yawning, stretching his arms before hopping out of the bed to greet his friend with open arms. When Laurent didn't move his body and instead only glared at him, he backed off, realizing what he was sure this situation looked like. "Right, Noire's out doing something at the moment. Did you know that your bed's much nicer than the spare one you've got here? Not very nice for the guests…"

"I presume you only moved to our bed once she left?" Yarne nodded, and Laurent raised an eyebrow over the upper rim of his glasses for a second before all suspicion left him, his faith in the people he knew greater than his desire to cause issues. "You will explain why you are staying here at some point or another, correct?" Another nod. "Very well. Apologies for ruining your slumber, the sight of you merely caught me by surprise."

"No worries, I'd do the same if I'd been gone for a while and came home to a different guy in my bed. Except you don't need to freak out, Noire's super careful about making sure that you're the only guy for her." The comment struck Laurent as odd, and so he asked for further explanation on the matter, which Yarne was happy to provide. "Well, she's been taking me out to try and find me a girlfriend, but a lot of the time it's her getting hit on by guys because, uh, you know, she's beautiful! A bit crazy, but beautiful!"

"And I am lucky to have her as my own," Laurent replied, not batting an eye at the reference to her being crazy. "Now shall we discuss all that I missed over a meal? Once Noire rejoins us she can add in her side of the story, naturally, but for now I want to hear yours and yours alone." It wasn't that he didn't believe Yarne, but rather he was genuinely curious about what he had missed in his time away.

When Noire came home an hour or so later, her arms laden with little flowers she'd picked from along roadsides as she'd walked, she was happy to see that Laurent was back, and even happier that he didn't seem bothered in the slightest that he'd walked in to Yarne being there with no initial explanation. The three of them talked late into the evening, their conversation finishing long after a reasonable time for Yarne to head out and find somewhere else to stay for the night; that meant that he spent another night there at the house, actually in the guest bed he had been claiming to have been sleeping in the entire time he'd been there.

By mid-afternoon the following day he was gone, ready to face his sister once more after having abandoned her for nearly a month, and that left the couple alone in each other's presence for the first time in even longer than that. "Let me make a guess and say that there is something pressing you would like to get done today, hm?" Laurent's question came once Yarne was far away enough as to not accidentally overhear him, and Noire started giggling much like a young girl when she'd heard it. "You're incorrigible, but I would never ask for you to be any other way." Muffled after that was a request that Noire was more than happy to oblige to, something that she needed to raise her voice to manage but that was something she was fine with doing for her love.

---

The request came in letter form, not prompted by anything that either of them were aware of, and when they opened the letter together while sitting outside of their house one afternoon Noire and Laurent were both surprised to see that it was an invitation for them both to join his parents (and select others) for a months-long retreat to the Feroxi mountains. "I…can't do that," she said, her eyes going wide at seeing the location. "You know who might be there if I go? My father. And if he's there, there's the chance my mother is as well, and I…I…no! I refuse!"

"Noire, please, that is merely an assumption you are making right there. The landmass of Regna Ferox is much larger than you believe, if you believe your father, and by extension your mother, would be there. My parents are aware of the consequences of putting the three of you in the same place, they would never do such a thing." Even with Laurent's confidence on the matter, Noire still refused to go unless they had written proof that she wouldn't come face-to-face with either of them, and so he obliged and wrote his parents a return letter, asking them who the "select others" in attendance would be.

Within days they had a response, delivered to their doorstep by a single raven that made Laurent shudder when he saw it. Its presence implied someone would be there for the retreat, and he found he was correct in reading that assumption once he read the note attached to the bird. The other attendees that were confirmed to be going were all people who he'd expected to be invited, but scratched in at the bottom in nearly illegible writing was a postscript that Noire's parents had been invited but hadn't confirmed or denied that they would be there.

That wasn't news he could pass along to her with the expectation of her coming with him, but after some discussion with her (as well as some of their friends, who were still milling around the area for the sake of companionship), it was decided that he would attend without her, bringing someone else as his plus-one instead. Naturally, that position went to the only single person in the group, because the moment Yarne heard that his mother was going to be in attendance he volunteered to take Noire's spot. And with him going with, that meant that there wasn't going to be someone to come stay at the house with Noire this time, meaning that she needed to mend the rift she'd caused by walking out on Severa that day and stay with her for the whole time the retreat was happening.

The length of the event wasn't fully set in stone, not even as the two men prepared to go off to it. "I suppose we will find out how long we will be out there once we arrive," Laurent said with a shrug once he was asked about it. "Depending on how long every person present wants to remain present, we could be out there for months. You know my mother will take the opportunity with me to catch up on research she has neglected in my absence."

"But I want you to come home as soon as possible," Noire told him, sincerity in her voice. "I have this feeling that if you're gone…something bad will happen. I just feel it."

"You allow yourself to feed into negative thoughts too easily, open your mind to positivity sometime and you may find a different outlook." He kissed her forehead after he spoke, hoping that the gesture would remind her of one positive in her life: even though he was going to be back on a different continent, he still loved her. It was a lovely gesture, but it wasn't soothing enough to her already-worrying soul, and she fought against him in the only way she knew how, through the power of her anger and her raised voice.

She was left alone to handle herself after her outburst, Laurent not wanting to have to change his plans simply because she didn't want him doing anything. He even reminded her that she had been invited and that she'd turned it down at the threat of her parents being there, but all that did was make her angrier that she'd been abandoned once more. Going back to Severa's side and telling her everything that had happened since their last botched interaction might not have been the smartest thing to do when she was fighting through emotions, but she needed someone to hear her out on what she had to say.

By the time she'd finished recounting all the events, the look on Severa's face was one showing how impressed she was with some detail of the story. "Look at you, sleeping with a man while you're with someone, after you told me you'd have to get consent first before you did that. And with Yarne, too. I'm surprised you actually did that, bet you're hoping that they're both gone long enough for all that to pass without them knowing, hm?" Her question confused Noire, but she didn't know how to ask for Severa to make it clearer, but Severa winked and did it anyway. "Don't worry, your little secret can be safe with me, and I bet Morgan and Nah will cover for you when the time comes."

"What do you…oh." That addition had been enough to get Noire to pick up exactly what she was implying, and the moment it sank in that that's what Severa thought had happened, she was rapidly shaking her head. "No, nononono, I didn't sleep with Yarne, at all, ever! Don't think I did that, I really didn't!"

"Sounds like someone who slept with him would be saying. But don't worry, I'll trust you on this one." Winking again, Severa held a hand out for Noire to cautiously take, and she squeezed it once she had it in her grasp. "And if you're lying, well, like I said, your secret can be safe with me. Laurent won't ever have to know a thing."

"I'm afraid I don't…think you're quite right on this." How badly Noire wanted to yell at Severa to get her to listen to her, but she knew that raising her voice would only end badly for her. She needed to remain respectful, she needed to stay calm, she needed to—not do what she ended up doing, which was yank her hand away from Severa and, after balling both hands up into fists, start screaming at her about how she was being painted in a bad light for something she hadn't ever considered doing.

When she finally calmed down she hadn't managed to change Severa's mind on the matter, but she had gotten one point across loud and clear. "Okay, okay, I won't bring up kids again the whole time you're here. Honestly I was just joking but I guess that's a bit much for you to handle, so sorry about that." Her words of apology were spat out, something that made Noire feel they weren't genuine, but this was Severa she was dealing with. Being genuine wasn't something she was exactly good at.

But a couple of weeks later, what they'd said to each other that day was coming back to bite Severa, as she'd begun to notice some strange changes in Noire's personality and how she was handling herself. Not one to go back on her own word without a good reason to do so, she had to hold her tongue any time she saw Noire until she came up with a graceful way to approach the problem she'd found, or until Noire noticed things were amiss as well. "Why do you keep staring at me whenever we're in the same room?" Noire eventually asked, catching Severa's gaze fixated intently on her. "There's something wrong with my clothes, I know, but…"

"You think this is about your clothes?" Severa replied, trying not to laugh out as she spoke. "Listen, remember that thing I said the day you first showed up for this trip? About not bringing up kids? I'm going back on that, right now, and you're just going to have to deal with it."

Shifting uncomfortably as she stood under the watchful eye of her friend, Noire considered making a run for it but she knew she'd be chased down, whether on foot or on wyvern. "I know, I know, I was just hoping you'd ignore it and let me, you know, live my life without you bringing anything up." On top of knowing she'd be chased down, she also knew that Severa wasn't going to let this news go without more insistence that she'd done something she shouldn't have.

"Without bringing it up? Noire, I'm not going to let you suffer through that alone and act like I don't know anything." She rose from her chair and grabbed her friend in a hug, making sure not to squeeze her anywhere below her upper arms. "Come on, now you've got to tell me so I know what to do about this. It's not actually Laurent's kid, is it?"

"W-what? No, it is his, I promise!" All that time, Noire had listened to Severa insist that he couldn't have children and that she'd have to go to someone else if she wanted to have one, but she was walking proof that she'd been dead wrong. "I never slept with Yarne in that way, we shared a bed but we didn't do anything! How dense do you have to be to think I'd sleep with a giant rabbit?"

"Ooh, harsh," Nah's flat voice responded, the dragon girl having come into the room without so much as a floorboard creaking. "I'll make sure to let Morgan and Yarne both know that you think so lowly of their species."

"Nah, this isn't the time for that!" Severa was almost bouncing where she stood, still gripping onto Noire's arms in a tight hug. "Our dearest Noire's joining all of our other lame friends in having a baby! Isn't that exciting?"

Pausing for a second to make sure she'd heard things right, Nah gave a one-shouldered shrug in response. "I suppose that's exciting, even if it means the only ladies left to not have one are Morgan, me, and you, and two of us aren't exactly, uh, capable given that we're together." She looked at Noire with a happy smile, then straight at Severa as she said, "I'd get away from her if I were you, that might be contagious."

Despite knowing that, in fact, there was nothing contagious about the situation, Severa still let go of her grasp on Noire and went back to her seat, talking the whole time. "Okay, but we have to tell people, like right now. Don't you think that our friends would want to hear about this? And Laurent, gods, we can't leave him out of everything! Does he know yet?" Noire shook her head, knowing that she hadn't known until after he'd left for that retreat. "Do you want to tell him yourself? A letter work for you?"

"I don't know where he is, I can't send a letter to someone I don't know the location of." The idea had crossed Noire's mind before this, but that very hang-up had stopped her right when she'd started getting excited about telling him that they were getting what they wanted. "We can't go tell him ourselves either, because of that same dumb reason. Isn't that silly? He's wanted to have a baby around for so long, and now that he's going to get one he's nowhere near here and I can't tell him…"

Pursing her lips together in thought, Severa was not going to let things end right there. "No, there's got to be a way, they have to have told someone their specific location. Do you know who all was going to that stupid retreat? One of them's bound to have told someone in Ylisstol or something about it. I can just send Gerome to find out and maybe find him in the process, and then we can roll with things from there."

"I…don't know much about it," Noire admitted, wishing she'd gone along despite the fear of her mother's presence. At any rate, her being there would've saved this whole headache of being stuck staying with Severa. "You're right though, they have to have told someone who knows something without being there. Maybe some of our other friends would know? Do you think any of them were invited, if their parents were going to be there?"

"Noire, my parents were going to be there and I wasn't invited, I doubt that's the case." Nah thought about what she'd said for a second, before clarifying, "Well, my father's going to be there, who knows about my mother. She—"

"You're a genius, Nah!" Interrupting her friend without even hesitating, Severa looked over at Nah with a large grin. "We send Gerome to find your mother and she directs him to where everyone else is! Foolproof plan, right?"

"—I'd prefer if you didn't contact her, in all honesty, but whatever works for your agenda you've got going on."

---

The one rule of being friends with Severa was that once she was stuck in her ways, it was impossible to get her out of them, and now that she had it in her head that she simply needed to send her husband to relay important messages, she wasn't going to give that up. Gerome wasn't willing to participate in the plan, but the moment that she threatened to get on Minerva herself and fly wherever she needed to, he changed his tune and begrudgingly accepted his role in the events. Rather than blame her (the plan-maker) for him getting dragged into it, though, he seemed to resent the person whose situation was the reason for everything happening.

"This is nothing but a waste of my time," he protested, keeping eye contact with Noire as he spoke, her shrinking back as his glare was threatening even though he wasn't being mean at all. "I should not have to leave my home to cater to someone else's needs, particularly the needs of someone who does not live here."

"You're doing it as a favor to her, and to me, and you know how much you love doing favors for me," Severa replied, coming up behind Gerome and running her hands down his back, getting him to turn and glare at her instead, allowing for Noire to try and hide for a few seconds before he was back focused on her. "Don't worry though, we're not going to send you alone or anything. You're going to have some company for this."

"Company," he repeated. "You're expecting me to bring someone along on Minerva's back for this ride, someone who isn't you and isn't accustomed to riding on a wyvern?"

To answer his question, a rabbit-eared woman poked her head into the room, nodding at him with a couple tongue clicks. "Might not be used to riding a wyvern, but a manakete? Check that one off the list." Morgan's way of expressing that she was the lucky "company" earned her a couple giggles, but more importantly it got Gerome to sputter, him reaching for his mask almost as if he was considering using it as a weapon to launch at her before she ducked back out of the room with a laugh.

"You cannot be serious about sending me with her, Severa," he plainly said, voice even flatter than usual. "Send Noire, send yourself, even send Nah, all three of you I could stand for the trip, but Morgan? I will have launched her off into the sea before we're halfway there if you think this will work."

"She might've missed the part where her brother went because their mother was there, she wants to get to spend time with her too." Severa put a finger to her mouth, before excitedly adding, "Look, it's another favor you're doing for me! Isn't that what you love doing? Multiple favors at once?"

Groaning, Gerome slowly nodded his head, shooting another glare in Noire's direction just because he knew this all led back to being her fault. "I suppose I can suffer through this for you, and only for you. Anyone else benefitting from what I do is not my intention." While Severa was more than happy with that answer, Noire wasn't at all, and she was starting to feel horrible about having caused all this to happen.

How easy it would have been to just go with because she'd been invited. Or how easy it would have been to never press the issue that she'd been taught to believe. Or how easy it would have been to…to just let Laurent do what he wanted and support him in his endeavors, without adding her own wants into the mix. She'd caused this all on her own, she didn't need to keep getting other people involved in the mess, but before she could vocalize this realization in a calm manner she snapped and started yelling about everything, about how she was being treated and about how no one was considering her when they were too busy focusing on what was best for everyone else.

The trip then became almost exclusively a "take someone somewhere else" trip, not a message-relaying one, and that was all her fault too; however, even despite the fact that he didn't want to have to pass a message alone Gerome still completed the task, even if the response he got was less than optimal. He returned about a week after he'd departed, alone on the back of his wyvern, to share the news that he'd told Laurent what was going on and was met with a look of disbelief, being told that it wasn't possible for a myriad of reasons.

In his inability to accept that he'd actually done what he'd committed to and fathered a child, Laurent had accidentally struck up the rumors that Noire had slept with Yarne once more, Severa making sure to never let her friend live that possibility down. As hard as she tried, she was never able to get that thought out of Severa's mind, always having to deal with the fact that she was convinced that some sort of cheating (that she had suggested herself) had happened, and this whole denial was just to try and look faithful.

Even when everyone had returned home and everything had been set straight, Severa wasn't able to be completely convinced that Noire was faithful all along—not even Yarne's testimony that he'd done nothing wrong and Laurent's clarification that he hadn't said it wasn't physically possible, but that the timing window had to have been so small that it wasn't realistically possible. The only thing that convinced her in the end was when that child was born without rabbit ears, without fur in places that humans didn't have it, and with the lightest dusting of reddish hair on the top of its head.

It had been a very, very long time since Laurent had first entertained the thought of having to watch a small, helpless being that he was in charge of, but that thought had become reality without him really asking for it. Research time had gone from being his alone time to time spent cradling his child as he wrote down observations of the development he'd noticed in the small girl since her birth, taking in all her tiny motions and building hypotheses based on them. He'd become immediately smitten with her, loving every moment he spent with her and taking raising her as his next great experiment in life.

As for Noire, she sat by watching the whole thing, thankful that above all else, this child had a decent father to raise her and a mother that was going to try her best.

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A/N: I was given a simple request to write some babyfic involving Laurent. how this became 16k I have no idea, but here we are anyway.