"I don't think this is the way we're supposed to be going. The sign didn't say to turn off here to get to Ylisstol, and we seriously just had a snack break an hour ago. Are you sure you know how to get us home, Maribelle?" Her voice filled with worry as she watched their car slow down from highway speeds to come to a complete stop, Lissa gave a timid glance over in the direction of the driver, who was currently sitting with her tongue half-out of her mouth as she thought about which way to go. "I don't think you know where we're going after all. Oh gods. Oh geez. We're going to get lost and everything's going to go completely wrong and it's all because I trusted you for directions!"
"Calm down, Lissa, all this stressing out is not going to do you any favors. I know exactly where I'm going, this just happened to be a back way to get home. I assured your husband and mine both that we would be in Ylisstol by tonight, but no one told me we weren't allowed to see some of the gorgeous mountain scenery while we were on our way." Making a turn that she had been over-preparing for, Maribelle started the car down a two-lane road that quickly became winding and desolate, the road sometimes coming right on the edge of a cliff that she was careful to stay far away from.
There in the passenger's seat, Lissa's eyes were fixated on the winding road before them, trying her hardest not to look at any cliff-side falls that they could take if Maribelle took a corner a bit too tightly. "I don't think I'm enjoying this 'scenic' route too much," she eventually said, bringing a hand to cover her mouth. "It's making me feel really sick to my stomach and I don't think I want to ask you to pull over…"
"That might be a good idea, it would be wildly unsafe for me to pull over anywhere on this road. Promise you this, my dear, when we get somewhere I can pull off I will do it for you." Maribelle gave a quick glance to her passenger, smiling sweetly as she did, before checking her rear-view mirror to see two sleeping boys taking a quick nap in the backseat, the smaller one resting his head on the older one's shoulder. "Hopefully that time will come before either of them wake up, I don't think I could handle their crying on this particular stretch of road today."
"That's because you're having to deal with my whining, isn't it?" Jutting her lower lip out behind her hand, and swallowing down hard to keep something that didn't belong from coming up, Lissa gave a deep sigh when she got the chance, watching as Maribelle brought her eyes back to the road without any indication of whether she was right or not. "Okay, well, this is what you get for taking a scenic route! I told you, I didn't even want to have to be in the car at all!"
"Yes, yes, I heard you then and I hear you now, you want nothing to do with car rides because you find it hard to keep from throwing up while on them, I understand. Perhaps this way wasn't my brightest idea, but when you see the sights in store on it, you'll know why I insisted on going this way." After taking another sharp turn that would have put them off a cliff had she messed up in any way, Maribelle carefully and slowly took one hand off of the steering wheel once the road had straightened up for a moment. As she let the car slow down as to not rush what she was trying to do, she reached for and grabbed her best friend's hand, rubbing the top of it with her thumb. "Trust me, it might be bad now but it's all worth it."
Lissa sighed again, dropping her other hand to let it rest on top of Maribelle's. "I don't even know what you're talking about with that one. Is it this particular road? The road trip in general? Being extra-super pregnant? I mean, there's so many possibilities with that one."
"I was referring to this road, but I can see why you'd think it's any of the other choices." With another curve coming up, Maribelle had to retract her hand so that she could steer properly, but before she brought it back to the wheel she made sure to get a quick brush of it against the large, swollen curve of Lissa's stomach. "Gods, I mean, I'm trying not to think too much about that baby in there, but…I bet he's all that's on your mind, isn't he?"
"Between worrying about if he's okay and worrying if his daddy's okay, oh, and worrying if we're going to die out here on this road you've decided to take, I've got a lot that's on my mind." Now bringing both of her own hands to rest on her stomach, Lissa gave a small, forced smile that reflected back at her through the side mirror. "I'm just a huge mess right now, and you're having to put up with me whining and complaining and wanting anything but what you've got for me, and I'm so sorry about that."
Maribelle softly clicked her tongue, shaking her head as she did. "There is simply no reason for you to be apologizing right now. I volunteered myself for this task of caring for you while Lon'qu is at that conference, I knew exactly what it was I was going to be having to deal with. Besides, if you could put up with me through me having two children, I can handle you expecting your first."
"Yeah, but we didn't decide to go on any long road trips when you could have started having either one of those babies! It's totally different!" Her voice was raising in volume, making Maribelle worry if either of the boys in the back seat would wake up from the noise. "I just can't believe that Chrom thought this was a good idea, and that everyone backed him up on it! Like, couldn't I just stay home by myself? Or, ooh, better yet? Couldn't you have just come to stay with me there? Why do I have to be taken back to Ylisstol? It's not like there's anything there that I don't have where I live now."
"This is true, but I think the idea was to have you be somewhere familiar and surrounded by everyone who could possibly help you if the need arises. And since Chrom and Lon'qu both are heading to Plegia for the week, being back where you grew up seemed like the logical option to everyone, I suppose." The road was winding once more, Maribelle having to hold off on conversation until she wasn't taking sharp turns every moment, and once they were back on another flat stretch there in the Feroxi mountains, she was back to talking to her best friend as if a car ride was the place they would always talk. "I think it's fitting, and this way, if anything were to happen while they're gone, it's probably much, much easier to get back to Ylisstol than to whatever dinky-little airport that was they were flying out of today."
"I doubt anything's going to happen while they're gone, nothing's happened yet and I really doubt it's going to just, you know, decide to all happen now." Returning to looking out the window at the road and trying to forget that they were high up in the mountains, Lissa found herself gently drumming her fingers on her stomach in tune with the car's running sounds. "He's just going to take his sweet time and I'm okay with that, especially since it means that Lon'qu will be able to be there."
"He'd be able to be there if you started having that poor child tomorrow, that's the beauty of you coming to stay with me while he's gone." Tilting her head and giving her friend a look from the corners of her eyes, Maribelle smiled as she watched how peaceful Lissa seemed to be as she kept herself from losing her mind there in the car. "This ride isn't as bad as you thought it was, is it?" she asked, hoping to hear the best possible answer.
Of course, what she got was far from what she wanted. "No, this is definitely a really bad car ride. I don't feel as sick as I did when we started coming through the mountains, but I am pretty sure that whenever we can stop, I'm going to make it maybe a step away from the car before I start throwing up." When Lissa looked back at Maribelle, she was trying her hardest to smile in return, but as the corners of her lips would tick upward she would pull them straight back down, the color in her cheeks fading away. "Are we going to be able to stop soon, anyway? I think we really should…"
"I'm afraid not. We've got quite a ways to go on this road before we'll be able to pull over safely." The groan that came in response was almost heartbreaking to Maribelle to hear, but she shrugged it off as she once again started focusing on upcoming curves. "It doesn't help that I am taking this road all too carefully today. Last thing I need is to come up too fast on something and slam on my brakes, I don't need to accidentally induce labor in you."
"As if you'd be able to do that. Trust me, if walking around town for hours doesn't do the trick I doubt a sudden stop would do it." Lissa was going back to her mindless staring, trying to keep her mind off of how uncomfortable and sick she felt at the moment, but with every curve they took she was unable to completely forget. Whenever the road would straighten out she would give small sighs of relief, but she knew that more was coming to make her suffer, and she was internally screaming at Maribelle for picking such a winding route for them to take.
Externally, though, she was finding herself less and less able to speak without feeling like she was moments from throwing up, and so she was becoming more silent with every passing curve. "These are the kinds of car rides I enjoy," Maribelle said after yet another set of tight curves. "Ones where everyone else is silent and we can just enjoy each other's company without everyone talking over one another."
She wasn't expecting an answer, having seen Lissa start withdrawing from conversation to keep herself from getting sick, so when a small voice in the backseat piped up, she was pleasantly surprised. "Ma, where are we?" the bigger of the two boys asked, rubbing at his eyes after having woken up. "Are we goin' home?"
"We're on our way home, yes, my sweet Brady. Why don't you go ahead and go back to sleep, we're still far from home and there's quite a while before we'll be stopping." She looked to the mirror to see the boy, tiredly rubbing his hand down his cheek, give her a nod of agreement before letting his eyes flutter back closed. "Phew, and here I was being worried that him waking up would only lead to—"
"Mama, where we goin'?" As if right on cue, the other little boy in the back seat had woken up, startling his older brother back awake as well. His arms immediately going to flailing instead of something more calm, he called out, "Mama, pwease!"
"—I hear you, my child! We're on our way home, go back to sleep so it's like we get there faster!" She glanced over at Lissa and how the other woman had started dozing off herself, her eyes tightly closed and her breathing the only sign that she wasn't sitting there dead, before looking back to the scene in the back seat, two eager-eyes boys staring at her. "Please, you two, your aunt Lissa is trying to sleep right now and you do not want to wake her up, she isn't feeling well at the moment. If you two sleep some more, then everything will be okay and we'll all be happy and home soon enough."
"Okay, Ma, we can sleep." Feigning closing his eyes again, having been awoken a bit too much by his brother's outburst, Brady leaned his head onto his brother's shoulder this time and gave a couple fake snores before he was whacked on the nose for it. "Ow! Why you hittin' me, Freddy? Ma said sleep, so we're gonna sleep!"
"What was that about hitting? Oh, is someone being a naughty child back there?" She'd put a stern tone on her voice, something that was unusual for when she was speaking to either of her children, but now that she was their only parent around for the week she figured she'd need to play the role their father played with them. When she got a shrieking in response, followed by Brady's insistence that he'd been hit again, she knew what she needed to do, and that was pull the car over to gently remind her younger child a few rules of how to behave when on a car ride.
The one issue with that was that, just like it had been with Lissa asking if they could possibly stop, there just wasn't anywhere safe for them to pull off when they were driving along cliffs. Even though she hadn't seen a single other car the entire time they'd been on the road, Maribelle knew that the moment she stopped, they'd be in danger of someone whipping around a turn and striking their car, and she couldn't risk that chance. Trying her hardest to block out the screeching from the back seat, she continued driving, giving occasional words of scolding to the offending child, who thought it was more of a game than anything serious and therefore continued on with his bad behavior.
It was nearly an hour later when there was a turn-off that Maribelle figured would be safe enough to stop at, a large gravel section alongside the road between it and an adjacent road. Coming to a complete stop in the gravel, the tires kicking up dust as they slowed, she was quick to turn the car off and unbuckle herself, the sound of the clicking a noise that was able to wake Lissa up when the children in the back hadn't. "W-where are we? Have we made it to Ylisse yet?" she groggily asked, looking around to see Maribelle shaking her head. "Then why have we stopped? Can I get out for a minute?"
"Go on ahead and get out, I'll be dealing with a couple naughty children so you can do as you wish." Opening her door and climbing out of the car, the crisp mountain air feeling nice on her skin, Maribelle watched as Lissa slowly got out as well, or at least, she watched her get to the point where she was half-out of the car. That was when she decided to do what had prompted her to stop the car in the first place, opening the door right behind hers and reaching into the car, undoing the straps on the car seat that the younger of the two boys was fastened into. "Now, now, little Frederick, why are you acting up like this?"
The boy, looking very much like the spitting image of the father he was named for, scrunched his face at the question his mother had posed at him. "Mama, we go out now?" he asked in response, noticing that he'd been freed from his seatbelts so that he could move around. "We go out pwease?"
She sighed, shaking her head and looking to her other child to see what he was doing, but she found that Brady had taken the moment of being still to unbuckle himself and lay down on the seat, looking very comfortable as he did. "We're not where we're going yet, my child. It's not time to get out quite yet, I just stopped to keep you two from fighting." She bit down on her lip as the child asked to get out again. "No, not yet, we're not there yet! Gods damn it all, why don't you get that part?"
"But Ma, where are we goin'?" Brady asked, sitting back up and leaning in close to his mother to keep her from growing more frustrated, although it had the opposite effect on her, something he noticed. "Okay, we're just goin'."
"It's not that we're 'just going' somewhere, it's that…" Maribelle made a quick glance at whatever Lissa was doing, which was pacing around a few steps outside of the car, her hands both covering her mouth as she had her head tilted backwards—a clear sign that she was trying her hardest to keep herself from getting sick out there. "…well, it's that we're going somewhere she doesn't know about. A secret place. All for you two, my precious boys."
"So not home?" Trying to follow along with what his mother was telling him, Brady seemed to get excited when she nodded at him. "Oh, okay! We're just goin', but not home. That's good, that's fun." His words were overshadowed by his brother screeching again, earning himself a reminder that such behavior wasn't allowed, especially not once they started driving again.
Making sure that both of her boys were re-buckled before she closed the door on them, Maribelle had one last thing to tell them: "Do not mention that we're not going home until we get to where we are going. I haven't told Lissa and I don't think she'll appreciate knowing what my plan is, especially since there's nothing she can do about it. But how was I going to pass up having my boys here in Ferox without doing this one thing?" The two boys nodded, both looking excited at what was coming, and so she shut the door and walked around the back of the car, ending up right in the path of where Lissa had been pacing. "Lissa, my dear, are you ready to get going once more? The boys are just as restless as you are, and if we keep going we should be home in a few hours."
"A few hours?" Stopping dead in her tracks, Lissa leaned her head back forward and opened an eye at Maribelle, looking at her with suspicion. "But we've been driving so long already, this is so stupid! Why couldn't we have just flown to Ylisstol?"
"Ignoring the part where I would not fly with my sons unless I would die otherwise, do you really think that they would have let someone who looks as pregnant as you on a plane?" Watching as Lissa gave a shrug, Maribelle gave her friend a once-over, reinforcing her statement with a simple glance towards the large, rounded stomach she carried before her. "I think they'd have taken one look at you and sent you home, possibly told you to put your feet up or something, you poor thing."
"If we'd have flown, I could get to put my feet up faster, you know." Dropping her hands from her mouth, Lissa revealed the pained and sickened expression she'd been hiding behind them. "But no, instead I have to deal with being in a car and it's doing nothing but making everything worse!"
Maribelle rolled her eyes, pointing towards the passenger-side door that Lissa had left open when she'd gotten out of the car. "I'm sorry, but up here in the mountains there's not much else to do but to get back in and keep going. We've got to get there somehow, and driving's the only way that makes a lick of sense."
"Once we get to your house, you're not getting me to go anywhere unless it's necessary," she said, giving a dramatic sigh in defeat. "Which means that, until it's time for me to have this baby, I am not leaving your house." As she made her way back to her seat in the car, Maribelle watched her walk, stifling a laugh at how over-the-top she was making her steps in an attempt to gain sympathy.
However, she didn't call that out until they were once again on the road, the boys in the back seat completely silent as they waited for whatever the "secret" thing their mother had promised them when she'd talked to them. "You know, Lissa my dearest, the way you walk might have something to do with why you can't seem to just 'walk him out'. Maybe if you, I don't know, tried walking like a normal person instead of an overdramatic—"
"Don't even talk to me about walking and being overdramatic, Maribelle." Shooting a disgusted glare in her friend's direction, Lissa had one arm wrapped around her stomach the best she could manage while she had the other resting on top of it, her fingers lightly tapping. "I'm pretty sure I have video somewhere of how bad you were about it, I'm nowhere near as obnoxious with it as you ever were."
"I won't argue against that, but I also didn't have the problem of an unwilling child who needs coaxing to come into the world. You could use some natural help, and properly walking could do it for you." She fell silent, suddenly feeling a bit awkward talking about ways to induce labor with someone when her two children were present, listening to every word that was said, and when she spoke again she had changed the subject entirely. "At any rate, how are you feeling now that you've gotten to step outside for a little bit? Still sick, I presume, but not as bad? Worse?"
"You already know the answer to that," Lissa replied, closing her eyes and nestling her head up against the window. "Now I'm going to try sleeping again to hopefully wake up to us getting there, or at least getting close, so please don't disappoint me on this one, Maribelle."
Not liking how Lissa was talking to her, Maribelle muttered some promise that she would try not to disappoint, but she knew that what was coming would undoubtedly lead to such disappointment. With the car becoming silent as their conversation ended, she glanced in the mirror to see her two wide-eyed boys waiting for them to get to the secret place she'd promised, and just the sight of them brought a smile to her lips. "Just because I'm supposed to get her to Ylisstol today doesn't mean I'm going to," she said to herself, focusing on the road once more. "It's a bad idea to have someone as pregnant as she is trapped in a car for so long, so I know tht one overnight along the way will be best."
The road was getting winding again, something that Maribelle took as them getting closer to where it was she was planning on turning off. She remembered having been told that it was down in a valley in the mountains, just off the road there before it got to the downslope that took it into Ylisse, but she hadn't expected the turn to come up so quickly. Obviously, anyone who was planning on getting there either knew its exact location or was coming from the other direction, but Maribelle was able to make the turn safely and make the trip down through the surrounding mountain peaks into the small valley that looked alive with color and buildings up there in middle of nowhere.
"I can't believe this place is actually real, and that we're actually here," she said as she brought the car to a stop alongside the two already sitting there in front of the main cabin at the camp, parking between the big truck and the other small family car. When she shut the car off, watching Lissa start to stir once more, she was quick to look back into the back seat and motion for the boys to get themselves out of their seats, something they were quick to do. When she looked back through the windshield, there was a woman standing in front of the car, arms crossed over her chest as she shook her head at what she was seeing.
Giving a wave at the woman, Maribelle expected to be left alone at least long enough to get herself and her sons out of the car before she was approached, but then that woman came straight for the door, opening it before Maribelle had even taken her seatbelt off. "I should have known you'd be stopping by, given that we knew you were up in Ferox, but did you really have to bring her?" the woman hissed, nodding in Lissa's direction. "Damn it Maribelle, not only is her sister-in-law here, but you know very well what's happened involving me and her both. You're a dumbass for thinking she's welcomed here."
"Well excuse me for not abandoning her somewhere along the way," Maribelle replied, finally undoing her seatbelt so that she could get out of the car and meet the other woman face-to-face. "My job, as requested by everyone, was to get her to Ylisstol for the time while Lon'qu is at the conference. I'm just making a quick stop here for the night so that the boys can play with the horses. Is that too much to ask for?"
"W-where are we now?" Once again waking up and completely disoriented, Lissa looked to where Maribelle should have been sitting and found her already out of the car, in the middle of conversation with someone. She scrambled to get herself out, not recognizing the building she was seeing before them but having fond memories of the car she nearly hit with the door she opened, having to get it to as wide of an opening as possible to get herself out without brushing against anything. It was then, when she was standing up outside of the car, that she turned and saw not just the person Maribelle was talking to, but the vehicle they were both standing beside, her eyes going wide at the sight. "M-Maribelle, why are we anywhere that she is?"
But Maribelle hadn't heard the question, still in the middle of talking to the person who had approached her. Said person was making the occasion glance over in Lissa's direction as she spoke, shaking her head and looking utterly displeased at her presence. "If I had known you were bringing her along, I would have told you hell no, you're not coming here. Her being here is a ticking time bomb on many different levels, none of which I want anything to do with. Get back and your car and get gone."
"Please, it's just for tonight. We can speak to Olivia and her children, she'll keep a secret under Chrom's nose if it's all in good fun and nothing goes wrong due to it, and as long as no one says a word to anyone about this visit ever, we'll be golden." Maribelle pressed her hands together in front of her, bowing her head. "Sully, I'm begging you, just this one night, for the sake of my little boys who have done so good with all our driving today."
"I do like that you're begging, as if that'll change how I feel about her, but…I don't know. I know I'll get an earful the second anyone realizes you're here, and double that when they find out she's here, but it's not like I'm the one who came up with the damn idea for you to show up, so maybe I won't get blamed." Raising an eyebrow as she watched Maribelle perk up and get very excited at the change in response, Sully continued, "But, you have to promise me that you'll be back on your way tomorrow. No excuses."
"As if we could afford to stay past breakfast tomorrow! I've arranged a playdate for these boys with some kids back in Ylisstol tomorrow afternoon, and I know if they miss that, someone will know we never made it home and therefore grow suspicious and tell someone." Grinning, Maribelle opened up her arms for a hug but rather than take the offer, Sully turned away and headed back for the cabin she'd been in before the car had pulled up. Once she was out of earshot, Maribelle turned to look at Lissa, and saw that her best friend was staring at her, rapidly shaking her head as she did. "Oh, don't you start with this idea-changing thing too, it's just one night."
"Do you not realize the, um, history? between me and her?" Lissa's voice was completely high-pitched, as she waved an arm in the direction Sully had gone off in. "She's the reason I left my last boyfriend, remember? Because she couldn't keep her hands off of him and he couldn't keep his off of her and—"
"First of all, you're getting far too worked up over this," Maribelle interrupted, internally cringing at the incorrect chain of events she'd just heard, "and secondly, even if that were the case and she had enabled your last boyfriend in cheating on you, you didn't do yourself any favors with cheating on him."
Lissa's arm-waving stopped, as she slammed her hand down on the side of the car. "I didn't cheat on him, he knew we were over before I even flirted with Lon'qu once!"
"We've had this argument many times, we're not having it again." Maribelle, completely ignoring all of her input into that whole messy situation, waited until both her best friend was calmed down and her kids were out of the car on their own before she did anything else, that being to grab her keys out of the ignition and get all doors on her side closed, taking both of her sons by the hand and starting to lead them to the cabin. "Now, if you'll excuse me, we're going to take advantage of being at a summer camp with horses for the day."
"You just…you can't…Maribelle!" Growing frustrated with what had just happened, Lissa slammed her door closed and chased after her friend to the best of her ability, being very mindful of how she stepped as to not earn more criticism of being overdramatic with her walking. She caught up to her right in front of the door into the house, grabbing one of Maribelle's long ringlets and giving it a hard tug. The scream of pain her friend gave was almost worth the deathly glare she was shot for it. "You're totally abusing what you're supposed to have done by coming up to Ferox to get me! This isn't fair!"
"I'm not abusing anything, not like how you just abused me by pulling my hair like a child. What a great example you're setting for my children, teaching them that pulling someone's hair because they don't do what you want them to is acceptable." It wasn't that Maribelle sounded upset by what Lissa had just done, but rather that she was upset that her children had been there to witness it; however, judging by how the two boys were trying to pull their mother's hands forward closer to the house, they most likely hadn't seen it.
Lissa realized this and pointed it out, saying, "As if they care about what I did to you right then! They just want to see the horses here, which is great, except for the fact that we are not supposed to be here because you are supposed to have been taking me home to your house!"
"Yes, I know that is what was agreed upon when this whole thing was planned, but it's one night. Nothing bad will happen, we already know this, so you can just spend tonight sitting in this place, waiting for tomorrow to come, and when it does, we will get home like you've wanted and act like none of this ever happened." Punctuating her sentence with a smirk, her smugness quickly faded when Lissa went for another ringlet, giving it an even harder tug. "What has gotten into you right now, Lissa? You're acting like an immature brat!"
"I'm acting like someone who is trying to stop someone else from making a big, huge mistake!" Tugging Maribelle's hair again, Lissa didn't notice a couple of heads poking out from one of the other doorways on the front side of the building they were standing in front of, eyes watching her intently. "Come on, let's just go, please?"
Taking in a deep breath, Maribelle denied her friend her request and made it to the front door, directing one of the boys to open it and then letting them go inside. With the door still open, she turned back to look at Lissa, smirking once more. "Too late, I'm afraid, my friend. Relax, don't stress out so much, and enjoy the time we'll have here. It's not too much longer until you won't get moments of relaxing much anymore."
With that having been said, Maribelle went inside and left the door slightly ajar in case Lissa wanted to follow her, but she had no intentions of doing that right away. "You're kidding me! All I asked for was to get to your house, not to have any of this detour business!" Throwing her head back and screaming, she still did not notice either of the people watching from the other door, not until she had let out all her anger and was preparing to actually go inside. When she looked in that direction and saw two heads of blue hair sticking out into the open air, she froze, forcing a smile as she did. "O-oh, how goes it, Lucina, Inigo?"
"Told you that was Aunt Lissa. Looks like you owe me that candy bar after all." Coming out from the doorway, covered in hay as if he'd been rolling around in a hay bale, Inigo gave a large wave in his aunt's direction, while Lucina poked back inside the stable they'd been hiding out in, a fact he realized when he never got an answer. "Lucy? Where'd you go? Don't you want to say hi?"
"She's probably getting your mom, who's going to tell your dad, who's going to tell Lon'qu, who is going to kill me the next time he sees me." Sighing, Lissa took a few steps closer to her nephew while he did the same in her direction, meeting her right in the middle. "So, uh, if it comes down to it, you wouldn't be the one to tell your dad a thing, would you?"
"Lips are sealed," he replied, miming zipping his lips closed. "But Lucy might tell him, even if I don't do it. We'll get in so much trouble if we both keep this a secret, you know."
"Keeping secrets from your dad isn't that bad of an idea, especially not if we get your mom in on it and she keeps it secret too." By then, that second door had opened up once more, Lucina and her mother coming outside, and when Lissa saw that Olivia had been brought to see her she lost all hope in her appearance up at the camp being secret at all. "She really did go get her," she said to Inigo, who nodded, stepping back to let his mother and sister take his spot in front of her. "Er, hello, Olivia. I know I shouldn't be here, but hear me out—"
"I don't want to hear anything! Gods, you shouldn't be standing like this right now!" Speaking softly but with panic in her voice, Olivia grabbed Lissa's hands and brought them together so that she was holding them both right in front of them. "Come on, there's plenty of space for you to be seated inside, I don't want anything horrible to happen to you while you're here, and that means none of this standing around business!"
"Yeah, Mother isn't going to tell Father a word of this, as long as Aunt Lissa does exactly what she's told while she's here," Lucina said to her brother, the two kids watching their mother starting to boss her sister-in-law around. "I guess she figured that this was going to happen, somehow. How could she have?"
Inigo shrugged, looking at his sister to see that she was looking back at him. "I don't know, but do you know what I do know?" When she asked him to elaborate, he did it without hesitation. "I know that we were about to ride some horses, and I would really like to get back to that if we could."
"Good plan! No matter how interesting Mother and Aunt Lissa's conversation is, we can see them talk a lot more often than we can ride horses!" At that, the two kids went back into the stable, leaving the pink-haired woman out there without her children's support as she slowly and carefully coaxed Lissa to come with her into the house, promising her a multitude of things, including that Chrom would never know what was happening and that nothing bad would happen if she stepped foot in the cabin.
However, Olivia was being generous with that last promise, because the moment the door closed on her and Lissa, Sully was coming towards them with anger in her eyes. "I don't recall saying she could be in here," she said, pointing towards Lissa. "Make her sleep out in the car or something tonight, she's not staying here. I can't afford the trouble this'll cause. Maribelle, okay, I can tolerate her staying tonight, but this one? Hell no."
"There's going to be no trouble that comes of it," Olivia replied, letting go of Lissa's hands to grab Sully's instead. "We're all going to have a lovely night of talking and interacting like friends do, and then when morning comes I'm sure they'll be on their way and we'll be able to brush this off like nothing happened."
"We will be leaving in the morning," Maribelle reinforced, standing by the slightly-opened door between the house and the stable, keeping an eye on her boys as they played in the stalls outside while listening in on the conversation. "I have to be back at the house by tomorrow afternoon, lest I ruin a playdate and let everyone know we are somewhere we shouldn't be."
"See? Maribelle's got this all planned out, I think we can trust in her and what thought she's put into this." Smiling, Olivia watched as Sully not only shook her head, but threw off the hands that held hers, that action making the smile fade into nothingness. "Please don't be so sour about Lissa being here, she's really a sweet person."
The finger was being pointed at Lissa once more, and this time, Sully made no reservations about keeping it at a distance. She got right into Lissa's face, the blonde shrinking back and nearly falling into the door behind her as she tried to keep away from the angry woman, but still she ended up with a finger pressed against the tip of her nose. "She might be sweet, but she's done something to hurt someone I happen to care about more than she ever could, and I can't forgive her for that." Bringing her thumb to her finger as she curled it back a bit, she flicked at Lissa's nose to try and intimidate her further. "I don't want her here, but I'm at a damn disadvantage on this one, so she can stay for the night, I guess, but she's not getting any sort of special treatment just because she's pregnant."
"I'm not asking for special treatment, I didn't even ask to come up here!"
"Yeah, as if I'm believing that lie." Stepping back and giving a loud sigh as she turned away, Sully once again pointed a finger at Lissa, but this time over her shoulder as she walked into the small living room of the cabin. "But whatever, you're here and I'm sure tonight's going to go from 'me sitting by myself while the guests do their thing' time to 'let's all listen to the damn ticking time bomb talk about her problems' time."
"I don't think calling her a time bomb is exactly very nice," Olivia said, knowing that due to her soft voice she was going to be ignored. "But you're probably right that we will spend tonight talking to her about everything. It's not every day that we get to see her anymore, not since she got married…"
"Huh, I wonder whose fault that is." Stopping for a second to look over at the door where Maribelle was still standing guard, Sully glared at the woman there, casting all blame for that particular situation onto her with a well-timed eye motion. "But whatever, you three have your chat session and I'll, I don't know, hang out with the kids in the stable with the horses all night. Always a fun thing to do."
Maribelle gave the suggestion a thought, but ultimately took issue to it. "If by 'kids' you're referring to the two you intended on having here, and only those two, I'm afraid you're sorely mistaken. If you're playing with the horses, my little ones will want to play too."
"And I'm not babysitting your children for you. If you want to chit-chat, you're doing it with your kids there with you. I agreed to spend this week with two older kids, not anyone more than that." Continuing on her way to the living room, Sully sat down on the lone chair in the area, propping her feet up on the couch arm across from her. "This is my camp for right now, I'm running it how I damn well feel like running it."
"If Lissa wasn't here, you would be all for assisting my sons in riding horses and caring for them, please don't take her being here out on me." Growing frustrated with the way the woman was treating her, and conveniently forgetting that all of this would have been avoided had she done what she was told and not made any side-trips out of her task, Maribelle first hollered out into the stable to make sure that Lucina or Inigo could watch the two younger boys before slamming the door shut and loudly stomping over to where Sully was sitting. "And, if you're going to act like queen of this castle, treat it with some respect!" she demanded, pushing the redhead's feet off their perch. "You cannot be slob-like in a place you're trying to rule with an iron fist."
"Here I was, thinking Maribelle was going to pick a fight because of how her friend here is treating me, but nope, all she does is complain about dirty behaviors," Lissa mumbled to Olivia, who silently nodded in agreement. "Like, okay, I get it that I might have been a bit rude to her before we came inside but…feet over me? Really?"
"She's probably just working out her emotions in the way only she can," Olivia said after a few moments of watching Sully put her feet back up just for Maribelle to push them down again, the two staring intensely at one another but seemingly having fun with their dispute. "Which is fine, it really is, except I think—" this was where she raised her voice to as loud as she could possibly make it, "—a certain someone should get out of that chair so we can have our delicate and pregnant princess sitting somewhere comfortable."
At the exact same time that Lissa tried to deny the "delicate" label she'd just been given, Sully gave a loud sigh and stood up, dramatically motioning towards the chair she'd been in with both arms. "Oh, how could I forget that she needs to be waited on hand and foot, even though she's not even supposed to be here!" she snapped, earning three distinct looks from each of the other women, all of them unamused with how she was still carrying on. "This isn't how this week was supposed to go. I did not agree to this, not once."
"It's just for tonight," both Maribelle and Olivia said at the same time, Maribelle's voice clearly overshadowing Olivia's for the entire sentence, but it was the softer-spoken woman who continued speaking afterwards. "She might not have been invited by you but Maribelle brought her along, and I'm always a fan of being in her presence. Let go of all your bad feelings towards her for just this one night, please. Tomorrow once they're gone you can fume about her having been here but while she's here just let her live."
It wasn't a perfect agreement, and there was a lot to it that Sully was not thrilled with, but she was realizing just how much she was on the losing end of the conversation and so she dropped it, walking out of the cabin to the outdoors without another word. There was plenty of reason for the three remaining ladies to sit around and talk to each other just as it had been predicted they would, but something told Maribelle that doing just that was going to only make things worse. "Olivia, could you check on my kids for me while I run and do something?" she asked, getting a nod from the woman after she'd made sure that Lissa was seated and comfortable in the chair they'd vacated for her. "This shouldn't take too long, and I have faith that your children have been able to keep mine safe, but…"
"You're either about to approach Sully and make amends for what just happened, or you're about to call your husband and tell him some wild story to make him never suspect you're here," Olivia predicted, catching Maribelle by surprise, "and I'm going to give you the time to do either one or both of them. Choice is yours, my friend."
As Maribelle had been thinking of doing one of those two things in specific, the other option never having crossed her mind, she put on a smile and thanked Olivia for the encouragement and assistance before stepping outside for herself. The sun had gone down a bit in the time since they'd arrived, resting behind one of the mountain peaks surrounding the camp, making the entire valley become covered in a shadow, a sight that Maribelle found honestly beautiful. "And to think, if I'd never chosen to come up here, I wouldn't have seen such a sight," she told herself, before reminding herself why she'd come outside in the first place. Putting a hand to one side of her mouth to amplify her voice, she called out, "Sully! Where did you get off to?"
"None of your damn business!" she heard in response, which gave her enough of an audible clue as to where the woman had hidden. She walked past the two small family cars and ended up in front of the big truck that was sitting in front of the house, the driver's side door sitting wide open and a trail of smoke coming out from behind it. The window was tinted and the lack of bright sunlight made it impossible for Maribelle to see what was happening behind the door, but she had her suspicions to the point that she walked right around the door to find Sully sitting there, burning a cigarette in front of her, it already half-ash. "Why did you have to do this to me?" she asked, flicking the ashes onto the ground, which Maribelle stomped on and put out before they could light anything on fire. "Bringing her up here like this, why'd you do it?"
"In all honesty, I thought you wouldn't mind it too much," Maribelle replied, her foot still twisting in the dirt underneath it. "I figured you'd be upset about it for a minute or two before letting it slide. Does what happened that involved you and her both still bother you that much?"
"It doesn't bother me, but I'm not the one I'm worried about." There was another flick of the ashes, the cigarette burned down almost to its filter without having been actually smoked once. "You know that people have huge mouths, someone's going to spill that this happened and Vaike's going to find out and—"
"The problem here isn't even yours, but rather his? My gods, Sully, do you know who has problems on other people's behalf?" When she wasn't given any answer, Maribelle supplied her own: "People who are in love have problems with other people in mind! We've gone over this before, if you love him, date him!"
"Hey now, we're not making this about my romantic pursuits and lack thereof again, been there, done that once and it ended in a great guy having his heart broken by some tramp who's now currently at my summer camp!" Throwing what was left of the cigarette down and watching as Maribelle stifled what remained of its burn with her foot, Sully reached into the side of the door and pulled an entire pack of the things out, taking another one and setting fire to it to start the process again. "Damn it, if I actually smoked I'd have gone through half a pack by now trying to process all this."
"Smoking's a dirty habit, I'm glad you just watch them burn when you're stressed, but the fact remains that you disliking Lissa being here on someone else's behalf is beyond silly. Why, you should just accept that she's here and that he'll never know or be brought to care, and that'll be the end of that." Laughing, Maribelle hoped that her words would incite some change in Sully's mind, but she had little faith in that happened. However, mention of people knowing and caring about where Lissa, and by extension, herself and the boys, was made her think about the second prong to Olivia's suggestion she'd made inside, and so she took a step back from the open truck door. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to place a call to my husband so that he knows we're not dead. Haven't spoken to him all day."
Watching as she stepped away, Sully sighed and threw the newly half-burned cigarette onto the ground, jumping down onto it as she tried following Maribelle. "Now, don't take this like I'm encouraging this behavior you've got going on, but you haven't been here long enough to make it seem like you made it back to Ylisstol. That's a several hour drive from here, and even accounting for how long you had to go off the right path, you'd still be on the road right now." She had Maribelle stop where she stood, turning back to see who was spouting the advice, and when she saw the smile on the blonde's lips she knew she was being helpful somehow. "Call him once you'd have actually made it, he'll be less suspicious that way."
"I didn't think of it like that, thanks!" Giving two thumbs up in approval at the plan, Maribelle went and grabbed her purse out of her car and, after making sure to get her keys from her pants pocket and place them safely inside the same pocket her phone had been it, extracted her phone to see that she had gotten a couple of recent calls, all from her husband's number. "It seems they've made it to Plegia, although if I'm not supposed to be seeing this then we'll just…keep my phone on its auto-reject mode until I'd realistically be home."
"That's a smart idea. Can't let him get suspicious that you'd be partaking in risky driving behaviors with your children in the car." The whole idea of aiding Maribelle in this cover-up of what she was doing did not seem right to Sully, but she wasn't going to cause more problems by trying to fight it any longer. She'd come to terms with the fact that she was going to have an unwanted guest overnight, and now she was starting to move past why she was having problems with that, there wasn't any reason to bring it all up again.
Of course, when she went back inside and everyone was trying to pretend that nothing had been wrong, it was incredibly awkward for everyone involved, including the children when they'd finished playing with the horses for the day. There did end up being some nice conversation, a few genuine laughs shared, and when nighttime rolled around there were no problems with assigning people to places to sleep for the night, but was it all worth it to any of them? Most likely not.
Especially not since Maribelle never once returned a single one of her husband's calls, not checking again to see if he was trying to contact her, until she was using her phone the next morning to make an important call of a different kind…
When morning rolled around, Robin was awoken not by an alarm clock or another bout of his inability to stay asleep, but instead the rapid knocking on some wall in the room he'd fallen asleep in. "Hu—what's going on?" he asked as he snapped to attention, looking around the living room of his house trying to find the source of the noise. "Whatever it is, it was most likely my wacky sleep schedule that's to blame."
"I was just checking to make sure you were going to wake up," his wife Sumia replied, her standing at the hallway entrance still in her pajamas. "You got home rather late last night and didn't bother coming into the bedroom once, which worried me." He looked down at himself and saw that he was still wearing his uniform from work, a sure sign that her story was completely true. "I thought you might have been shot on the job last night, or something worse, and it began to eat at me."
"No, ha, I guess I was just tired enough to come home and fall asleep on the couch." He stretched, his neck and shoulders sore from what was undoubtedly a horrible sleeping location. "Why're you waking me up so early? Something else wrong?"
She scuffed her foot along the carpet for a moment, thinking about how to say what she felt needed to be said. "I got a call just a few minutes ago, from Maribelle. She says that her boys aren't feeling so well today and that they're not going to be able to honor the playdate that was arranged. She offered to make up for it tomorrow, which I told her was fine." Walking to be by her husband's side as he stood up to continue stretching, Sumia grabbed him into a hug at the first chance she got. "I assumed you would want to know that before you tried rounding them up to go before you headed to work later."
"Work, please don't remind me that I have to go back in today too!" Smacking himself on the head while still wrapped in his wife's hug, Robin gave a heartfelt chuckle at his own situation. "I never thought I'd say this, but I don't envy Chrom for his position at all. He's got a lot on his plate, doing what he does every day, and they're mighty big shoes to fill when you're used to working days doing investigation work."
"It's only a temporary thing, and when Chrom's back we can invite him over for a nice dinner while you tell him all the things you did in his place." Pausing for a moment to realize she'd just said what he had, Sumia heard her husband's chuckle turn less heartfelt and more awkward, and she sighed. "Or, you know, we could go to his place and have Olivia cook for us like we always do. She's a lovely housewife, even if her out-of-house activities are…less than stellar at times."
"I happen to respect that she can teach dance classes to all sorts of people, hush." Breaking from his wife's hug, Robin playfully smacked her on her arm for her comment. "And it's never been confirmed if she teaches those kinds of classes, we've all just assumed she's taught a handful of them."
"There should be something against letting a woman who knows how to pole dance be a housewife," Sumia stated, sighing again. "But you're right, we don't know if she's actually done that or not. Doesn't mean she hasn't."
Robin smacked her again, still as playful as before. "Come on now, no talking bad about my boss' wife, she's a lovely lady and cooks enough food to feed an army when we visit. Besides, this wasn't about her, it was about Chrom and his job and how I'm wary at best about knowing if I can actually do it this whole week." He shook his head at the thought of having to pull more of the strangely-timed shifts he'd just had to participate in. "Why did I have to consider seeing certain Plegians worse than having to work like this?"
"Because you wanted to be sure to stay loyal to me, that's why." Replying with a small smile, Sumia leaned in and kissed Robin's cheek, him pushing her away. "Oh, stop it, you know that's a joke. She was a real creep, sure, but why would either of those officers be there? Their commander, your father, probably did away with them after what they did here."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that. Seen plenty of letters from one of them addressed to someone we know fairly well, at any rate he's still alive." Never once had Robin really thought about those letters before that moment, and when his tire mind pieced together the moment in time Sumia was referencing to the presence of those sometimes-aggressive letters, he groaned. "Gods damn it all, Sumia, I just realized why we get those letters on occasion."
"Why it is, I don't think I want to hear it," she said, taking him by the hand and pulling him towards the hall. "Let's just go back to bed, it's still early enough that we have a few hours before the girls will be up, and you could use some more sleep before working again tonight."
"You know what, I think you're right on that one," Robin agreed, following his wife's lead. But before he crawled into bed alongside her, he did run back out to the living room to grab his phone, sending a message to one of his fellow officers to let him know of a particularly interesting development or two he'd discovered in that little bit of time he'd been awake. If anything, when that news was seen the recipient would at least get a small laugh from it.
A/N: and so with this chapter we've gotten a feel for the other two sides of the story, now let's see where it goes from here...
