Some scars weren't meant to heal right away, and dealing with the loss of a child she'd just barely begun to understand she was going to have wasn't anything Maribelle handled with grace. She never once brought it up with anyone but Panne, and that was only because Panne had happened to be in the right place at the wrong time to find out, which meant that there were a lot of people who were suddenly in the dark about something they didn't understand. There was confusion the next time Lissa teasingly brought up the idea and was met with a blank stare and an insistence that it wasn't happening anytime soon, if ever, and if she was confused when she heard that, then there had to be something greater to explain how Vaike took it when he realized Maribelle didn't seem to want what she'd waited for from him any longer.
Eventually, though, things went back to what could only have been described as the new normal: there was work, there was down time at home, there were weekly get-togethers with friends, and there was not even a fleeting mention of the idea of them starting a family. It was nowhere near what Maribelle had anticipated her life would have become once she'd gotten married and settled down, but it was better that than another heartbreak that she'd inevitably shoulder all on her own.
The time began to pass faster, as everything they did fell into this usual routine they'd built for themselves. Sure, sometimes there were hiccups in the plan, and sometimes things got cancelled or work prevented things from happening, but overall it was the same thing every week, more or less. But as it got into the following year, they started talking about taking some time out of their normal routine for themselves, to go off and celebrate the time they'd spent together. "Two whole years, huh?" she'd remarked the first time they talked about doing something special. "If we were going to do something, shouldn't we have done it last year, or are we just being slow?"
"Hey, last year there was a lot goin' on for ya at work, with all those hard cases and stuff that had you cryin' all the time. Wasn't gonna ask ya t'take off outta that, even if it woulda been great for ya mentally." If there was one thing Vaike always tried to be, it was considerate for what was best for the woman he loved, even if his decisions didn't make the most sense. "So what I was thinkin' was that we could take a week and go off and do somethin' together, somewhere we've never been. Somethin' new and exciting t'mark the time we've been married. Fun, right?"'
"I wouldn't label it as 'fun' until we know what, exactly, it is that we'll be doing, but I'm sure whatever we come up with, it'll be enjoyable." Some of the last things they'd done that he'd called fun that she hadn't enjoyed were going to see some shoddy movies, trying their hand at bowling (which she'd never done and actually broke multiple nails in the middle of solidly knocking down as many pins as she had fingers in the whole game), and checking out local restaurants that really should have been shut down before they arrived. "A week alone with you, without work to worry about or the house to keep tidy? Sign me up for that."
"Okay but, we ain't doin' this until it's at least our anniversary, gotta make us both wait for it. At least that way, we've got the time t'really plan what we're gonna do, so that it doesn't end up goin' horribly." Hearing him talk of plans made her remember the last plan they'd come up with together, the one to maybe start a family, and the heartache from that came at her with full force, hitting her right where it hurt; rather than let him see that she'd let her thoughts wander into painful territory she smiled at him and let the conversation fall dead right where it was.
It wasn't the end of their time on the topic, however, and when he brought it up again a few weeks later she was back to being invested in the idea on the condition that they set in stone what it was they were going to go do before they committed to it. That led to them both having to do their own research on the matter, to see what there was anywhere in Ylisse that seemed interesting to do together, and Maribelle knew exactly who she needed to go to in order to find some fun suggestions.
"Ooh, you're talking about a romantic getaway?" Lissa asked, hands cupping her cheeks in excitement as Maribelle explained the situation as they stood outside of their cars parked along an empty downtown street. "Count me in on planning this! I had a lot of fun back when you two considered that cruise you did, maybe this time I'll manage to even top that!"
"Trust me, you might've been the only one who had fun with that one," she muttered in response, before shaking her head. "Seriously though, all I'm looking for is an idea of somewhere that we can go for a week that's unique, that's interesting, and that will entertain me more than sitting in a room on a boat. I'd rather never do that again, even if it is with one of the people I love most."
"Okay, okay, what is there to do. Hm…" Moving one of her hands up to scratch behind her ear as she thought, Lissa took a few seconds before she shrugged. "I've got nothing right now, we might need to figure out where we're going for the day so I can sit down and really think about all the places I could suggest for you to go. Money's not that big of a concern for this, is it? I think I know some places that might be a bit pricey."
"Money's never a concern, what matters is that we have fun," Maribelle lied, knowing that limiting Lissa's possible suggestions would just make things harder, but also aware that too much couldn't be spent on the trip or else they wouldn't be able to pay for things once they were home, even with savings and preparation. "I know that you and your brother have seen the sights of Ylisse that even I've never considered, that's why I turn to you first about this sort of thing. Experience trumps any kind of proper research."
Hearing the praise of her past adventures, Lissa began to blush, only making her head-scratching more furious. "Well how about we go eat somewhere, then we get to putting all the possibilities out there for this!"
"Sure, you lead the way and we'll make something happen." Not sure what to expect for either part of what Lissa had said, Maribelle went along with where she took them, which was a corner café not far from where they'd parked, somewhere that looked quiet and barely busy, with a judgmental barista at the counter watching their every move as they came in. The barista felt familiar to Maribelle for some reason, a familiarity that she couldn't quite place, but she let Lissa interact with her and place their order as she found them the table furthest from the door to sit at. "They didn't have any fresh tea and I didn't want to order a coffee for you and see you spill it on yourself again, so I asked her to make some tea and bring it to us once it was ready, if that's okay," Lissa explained when she came to the table herself completely empty-handed. "She didn't even ask me for my name, which was super weird. Normally in places I've never been they have to ask me for that."
"Did you pay with your card? She could have read it off of there." Maribelle's response came as she looked at the barista behind the counter, the red-haired woman having toned down her judgmental glare as they'd gotten comfortable inside the café. "Anyway, if she didn't, it might be because she knows us from somewhere. Where, I have no idea, but I definitely recognize her. Maybe from work? Have I represented her or her child on a case before?" That would have explained the woman knowing her, though, not Lissa, and that didn't answer the mystery they were currently trying to solve.
"I don't think I know her, but I didn't pay with my card so she definitely didn't get my name that way. Oh well, it doesn't matter, does it?" Lissa seemed more than happy to move past figuring out who the barista was, but even as she started talking about all the possible places that were up for consideration Maribelle wasn't really paying attention to her. She was transfixed on who was behind the counter, watching the woman have to adjust her glasses as the hot water she was making tea with steamed them up. "Er, Maribelle? Are you with me? I just said maybe going to the mountains would be nice, there's a lot to see and do there."
"Mountains, sounds outdoorsy and not like anything I'd have fun doing. I'm not one for hiking, I'll get tired and need to be carried back to wherever we're staying." Giving her head a shake to try and clear her mind, Maribelle turned to face Lissa, a small smile on her lips. "Not like I'd be complaining if it was my husband carrying me down, but I think he'd have a word or two to say about being treated like a pack animal."
Giggling at the way she'd worded that, Lissa went right into another suggestion. "So no mountains, and no cruises, that's fine. There's all sorts of natural wonders in Ylisse, if you want to go looking for them. Small villages where you can get a nice room at a bed and breakfast and relax there? Islands where you can relax on the beach? What are you leaning towards, you've gotta help me out! This is for you!"
"I don't know, Lissa, that's why you're helping me to begin with. All of that sounds…okay at best, I just don't know what I'd like to go do. It's so hard to even imagine dropping everything for a week to do something, I can't picture what it might be that I'm doing!" Once again Maribelle was looking away from Lissa, trying to get a glimpse of the barista again, but she was nowhere to be found. Nor was she coming towards them with fresh and hot tea, which caused her to bring a hand to her mouth in surprise. "Where did the only employee here go? We didn't walk in at or after closing time, did we?"
"No way, this place is never closed early in the day, not when I see it. Then again, most of the time when I see it it's just as empty as it was when we got here, so we've made it busier than normal, maybe she couldn't handle the pressure?" Lissa wasn't as concerned with the stranger's whereabouts, as she wasn't as insistent that she knew the lady as Maribelle was, and she went right back to listing off places that were potential getaways, as if nothing else was happening in that moment.
Maribelle still wasn't paying attention, though, as she was looking around trying to figure out where the woman had gone. "Maybe she went into the back room?" she suggested under her breath, noticing that there was a door behind the counter that seemed to lead somewhere, rather than being for decoration. "But what if we'd intended on jumping behind the counter and stealing things? Shouldn't she be watching for that?"
"Ahem, I would strongly hope that a lawyer such as yourself would never partake in foolish illegal activities, especially when the person you would be stealing from is a loyal and trusted associate of your law firm." The barista's appearance right next to the table took both women by surprise, but what was more surprising was the lack of cups in her hands, replaced instead with a packet of papers that she was offering towards Maribelle. "It isn't usual for someone we work with to wander into the cover job, but knowing how fastidious you are with your cases I can only assume that you knew you would find me here."
"I'm going to be honest, I had no say in where we went today, it was all my friend's choosing." Taking the papers in hand, Maribelle recognized them as status updates she'd requested on a couple of old clients a few weeks previously, and she looked to the person who'd given them to her in shock. "Hold on, Miriel? Why do you work in a coffee shop?"
"There you go, showing that despite your brilliance in defending children, you are not nearly as observant of the world around you. This shop is merely the front room to the children's shelter that I help run, a way to earn some extra money for the kids we help move into forever homes." Pushing her glasses up her nose with the side of her hand, Miriel smirked as she saw Maribelle's jaw slightly drop at the revelation, her eyes darting all around the small, still-empty shop. "It's a rather ingenious plan, if I do say so myself."
"I had no idea that your shelter was downtown! If I'd known, I would've come here so much sooner!" Things weren't exactly making perfect sense, but Maribelle was figuring out that this shop wasn't anything like it seemed, that back room was actually somewhere much more wholesome than just a storage room or an office. This woman standing next to her was someone she'd encountered many times during her cases, due to her being the logical mind behind the rehoming and pre-foster care shelter in Ylisstol, and it was only slightly shameful that it took until she'd passed along information she'd been asked for Maribelle to properly recognize her. "Do you actually serve drinks here, or did you make my friend pay you for nothing in return?"
The smirk faded, going to a more neutral expression. "We serve drinks, yes. This is a fully-functioning coffee shop after all, it just plays a role that connects it to the building it obscures from the view of the street. But even if I had taken her money for nothing in exchange, think about it, that money would—" she flicked the papers she'd handed over, "—go right to assisting children like this who are in desperate need of somewhere better to live."
"Hold on a second, you're telling me you two work together?" Lissa asked, finally getting a grip on what was happening in front of her. "That's totally why you recognized her, isn't it Maribelle? Because you work together?"
"We don't work together in the sense you're thinking, I think. It'd be like me saying you and Panne work together, just because you both work at the hospital." The mere mention of Maribelle's other close friend got Lissa to shrink back, hanging her head in apology, but it also brought that smirk back to Miriel's face. "Honestly, I think Miriel here probably works with her more than me, anyway, seeing how many times I've run into her over in the pediatric wing."
"I do spend copious amounts of time walking those halls, checking on children being brought into the system Libra and I have worked so hard to maintain. A basis in faith and wanting children to be happy, healthy, and wanted wherever they are, that is how we run our shelter and we will never change it." Miriel paused, as she glanced back towards the counter she'd left unmanned the entire time. "Perhaps I should go drag him away from drafting whatever message he's planning on sending out and have him properly meet you, we speak often enough about him in our conversations."
"Don't worry about it, if he's doing something I would prefer not to ask you to bother him so I could meet him. Always next time, you know?" She was only partially speaking out of genuine kindness, but partially because Maribelle had looked in the same direction Miriel had and had reminded herself that she had been promised tea. "But, uh, if you're not going to go get him, could you maybe—"
"Get your drinks finished, yes I could do that. Even if this is not a primary occupation, it is still one that I must take seriously on the off-chance people such as yourselves stumble in as if we are a real coffee shop." Chuckling to herself as she walked away, the next time Miriel came back was with two decent-sized teacups on saucers that looked well-used. "We regrettably do not have the best dishes to serve our customers with, but that is what happens when most money raised here goes straight to the children."
Maribelle smiled, pushing aside the papers she'd been leafing through to make room for her drink, while Lissa watched them both with suspicion in her eyes. After Miriel was done thanking them for their patronage and headed back into the other room, the shop once again empty aside from the two women, that was when she spoke her mind on the situation. "Okay, so I don't know who that is or why she's giving you important documents right in front of me, but did she say my money I paid to her for our drinks is going to children? Really? How cool is that!"
"Heh, yeah, her and her husband or boyfriend or whatever he is, they run the service here in Ylisstol that rehomes battered children, but they function on donations and fundraisers and I guess this shop here." Sipping from her tea, nearly burning her tongue as she didn't expect it to be as hot as it was, Maribelle set her cup back down and looked at the papers again. Some of the more difficult cases she'd had to get involved in were represented in the stack, children lucky enough to get out of their negative situations at times where the shelter behind the shop had openings. "They do a wonderful job of helping the children out, they're basically new parents to these kids until they actually find them new parents."
"That's even cooler than just the money going to helpless kids! I want to make a difference in someone's life like them, or like you, but I guess I went into the wrong field for that." There was a pause, as Lissa realized how wrong she was, given that she was a nurse who'd made plenty of difference in many lives. "I mean, kids' lives. I want to change them and help them and keep them save like you guys do."
"H-hey now, we don't get involved until they're past safe. You at least aren't getting called in because someone's been abused, you're just taking care of, uh, people who fall off ladders and get in car crashes and simple things like that." The first example that had come to Maribelle's mind had been "people who shoot themselves with nail guns" but she knew that was too pointed and too referential to her own husband. "But seriously, why are we dwelling on all this heavy stuff? Coming up with places for my trip, that's what we're supposed to be doing."
"Ri-i-ight, that is why we came here, then you and the barista got super caught up in talking about other things. What's more important, work or vacation?" Lissa teasingly asked, knowing that Maribelle would say the former without hesitation. She was given a glare over the rim of the teacup for her question, which made her snort with laughter. "Fine, fine, let's make vacation at least a little important to you now, I guess. What a shame that I really haven't come up with anywhere else to tell you…"
Nearly spitting out the tea in her mouth, Maribelle replied, "Nowhere else? You've got to be kidding, you have to know somewhere, anywhere, that's unique and that we would have fun being there to celebrate our anniversary."
"I mean, I can list off all sorts of places, but I know you, and I know Vaike, and I know both of you won't like most of these places. Art installations by the sea? He'll hate it and complain at you about how bored he is. Cool parks with all sorts of animals roaming wild? You'll have a hard time keeping him from harassing something and getting himself mauled. There's just no winning with the two of you!" Throwing a hand into the air to show how exasperated she was pretending to be, Lissa added, "But of course, you could just go stay at a nice, private, romantic hotel somewhere and let nothing stand between you two and doing anything you want with each other."
"Please, if our goal was to have pleasurable time together for our entire getaway, we wouldn't bother with traveling and would rather stay home, together, in the comforts of our own bedroom." Now Maribelle was rather thankful that Miriel had disappeared back into the other part of the shop, she'd have hated for her to have overheard this part of their discussion. "Hm, how about a nice resort or something, do you know anything about any of those? I know you and Chrom most likely wouldn't have stayed at any when on your trips, but there's always a chance, correct?"
"I've heard of a few, but they were always things we just kinda passed by as we were going wherever it was Emmeryn was taking us." Lissa shrank back in her chair as she let thoughts of her older sister cross her mind, memories both bad and good coming up just at the mention of her. "Something I do remember, though," she said in a hushed voice after a moment, "is that she loved taking us to go see all sorts of musicals and shows, just so that we had something to do while she was doing her business."
"Musicals? Don't you think that's a little…absurd of a suggestion, given who I'd be taking with me?" To be completely fair, Maribelle had done her fair share of enjoying soundtracks from musicals, but the thought of dragging Vaike to see one felt like it would be equal to him trying to drag her to, for instance, something physically-intensive and draining. "We wouldn't have any kind of common interest in any of the musicals touring around Ylisse, I'm sure there are very few that he'd be remotely interested in giving a try."
Lissa scrunched her face at the negativity but quickly decided it wasn't worth the fight. "That's fair, I forgot not everyone is into that sort of stuff. Guess I'm all out of ideas though, I really gave it my all but that's that."
"We still have time to come up with something, there is no 'all out of ideas' quite yet." Sipping off her tea again, Maribelle could tell that something was bothering Lissa in the moment but she wasn't going to call attention to it, assuming it had to do with talking about her sister. "We can meet up again in a few weeks and see if anything's come to you then, provided that someone else hasn't already come up with a perfect idea."
"I sure hope someone comes up with one before me, all I think I'm doing is giving bad answers that you automatically reject." The honesty was appreciated, but it was clear that Lissa wasn't focusing on how helpful her giving rejected possibilities actually was. "I guess, if you really want me to keep trying at this, I can look through photo books and see if Emm had taken us anywhere else, but really she just toted us along on her business trips and to conferences and stuff like that. You know, boring adult things."
"Lissa, has it occurred to you that we have become boring adults who do boring adult things? We work all day, we struggle to come up with things for vacations, we've passed from young and wild to old and lame without realizing it." Suppressing a laugh by taking another sip of her tea, Maribelle closed her eyes and envisioned her life if she hadn't, as she'd just put it, become old and lame. She figured she'd be on trips every week, money thrown everywhere, having a grand time everywhere she went, no cares in the world other than the pursuit of pleasure. "Maybe that's why we're having such a hard time here, because we want to bore ourselves to death."
"I mean, if you want me to look up where business conferences will be in the middle of summer, I could probably do that for you. I could even ask Chrom, I'm sure he'd know of plenty you could crash because you're 'old and lame' now." Watching as Maribelle cracked her eyes back open, looking at her as if she'd just said the dumbest thing imaginable, Lissa continued with, "Oh, come on, don't act like he wouldn't find that hilarious if I called him right now and did that. I bet he'd think someone put me up to it and demand to know which of his friends are trying to get him to work less."
Reflecting on that for a second and deeming it entirely plausible, Maribelle set her now-mostly empty cup down and laughed. "That's very true, and he would never expect that it was a conversation between the two of us that sparked it, but maybe we should leave him out of it. No calling him for silly reasons unless they're really worth it. He has enough on his plate every day, he doesn't need us adding to his stresses."
"You wanna know something bad about us having grown up and gotten our big-girl jobs and all that?" Lissa asked, what Maribelle having just said fresh in her mind. "We don't have time to sit around and gossip about what Chrom and all his friends are doing anymore, and it sucks. Remember when we used to do that? Find a place like this, sit for a couple hours studying and talking about what they were all doing? Why can't we go back to those days?"
The proper answer would have been to remind her that they'd gotten older and more responsible, but Maribelle knew that there was something pushing her towards that line of reminiscence. "We could try to, if we wanted to spend more time together, but I'm afraid that I don't hear much about any of the old group, unless it's Vaike telling me about him running into one of them. I shouldn't ever end up crossing paths with any of them, if they've turned into halfway decent people who could someday become parents."
"Heh, yeah, I forgot about that part of things, I guess I see all of them more than you really would. And that's okay, next time we want to hang out and talk you can tell me what you've heard from Vaike and I can tell you what I've seen and heard for myself!" Grinning, Lissa gave Maribelle a thumbs-up, a gesture that was returned to her with no hesitation. "It's settled, we're gonna do that the next time we meet up for talking about your trip! So plan it out now, we've got a lot to talk about when we get there!"
When they left the café not long after that, dishes neatly stacked and a couple dollars tucked under the pile ("for the children," Lissa insisted), they parted with the agreement that they were going to have another meeting like this again soon, and they were going to gossip just like they had when they were younger. What ended up happening was that there wasn't any reason for a second meeting on the trip-planning topic, as something that Maribelle hadn't expected happened the moment she started talking about what Lissa had thrown at her as suggestions for the vacation.
At the mention of going and seeing some kind of stage performance, while he wasn't overly thrilled with the idea, Vaike told her that he would consider making that what they did, go and stay somewhere nice and see a show, but only if he was allowed to pick which one they went to see. Surprised that he was fine with that, as she'd gotten it in her mind that while she'd have fun seeing a show, he wouldn't, she immediately accepted his offer, allowing for him to plan things as he wanted and let her be shocked when the time came for them to go on their trip. With that agreement made, they didn't really speak much more about it, outside of him asking if there were any shows she'd heard to stay away from, because he was completely clueless on the medium and she had at least dabbled in listening to soundtracks.
That also meant that she completely forgot that she was supposed to meet back up with Lissa and have a dual-purpose planning and gossip session. As weeks went by without so much as a thought on the agreement they'd made, she'd gone right back into focusing entirely on work and the regular schedule that her life had created for itself; this was broken only when Lissa called her, confused and a bit upset that she'd been forgotten about. "This isn't what best friends do to each other, why do you keep leaving me out of things?" she tearfully asked during the call, a question Maribelle couldn't give a proper answer to. They'd grown up but that didn't mean they needed to grow apart, and something needed to be done about fixing that problem.
Adding in a weekly get-together with Lissa just to make sure they kept in touch and maintained their friendship wasn't the option Maribelle had wanted to go with, but it was the only one that made sense. Committing yet another chunk of her time each week to something else was just another stressful thing that she'd have to accommodate now—and for the first time since it had happened she was starting to see losing the child she'd wanted not as a horrible thing, but as a heartbreaking blessing in disguise. Having that kid around would have only added more to the nightmare that her life had become, and maybe it was for the best that fate had decided she shouldn't have had a kid there in that moment.
It was a nasty thought, but it was one that kept cropping up as the weekly routine got to be more smothering. How would she have had the time to deal with preparing for a child, while trying to keep her social and professional lives intact? She wouldn't have been, she would have given up and collapsed under the pressure and she needed to remember that everything happened for a reason, every loss and gain in life. But even still, surviving under all her current stress wasn't something she was sure she was capable of, and she knew that she'd get a week's reprieve from the struggle when her anniversary came around. After that, she'd have to rework how things were happening to allow herself some breathing room, but at the moment she had the trip they were going on to look forward to.
It wasn't…that long until summer came around, was it?
By some stroke of luck, or perhaps just her own insistence that she make it through, the last day of work before they were to leave came upon Maribelle after a multitude of weeks that crawled by at a snail's pace. They'd decided they'd leave on the night of their anniversary, since it was mid-week and they'd get to their destination (which was a couple hours outside of Ylisstol in a little resort town) while most residents would be back at their homes and no tourists would really be around. It made perfect sense, then, to work up until the hour they were going to leave, to make sure as much as possible was taken care of before being gone for an entire week.
She was sitting at her desk, reorganizing new case files so that she could jump right into them when she got back, when the receptionist poked his head into her personal office, informing her that she had someone there to visit with her. "I'm not scheduled for any client visits right now, can you tell me who it is?" she asked, the receptionist shrugging his shoulders in return. "Let me guess, it's not actually someone here looking for my help, is it?"
"The man didn't say much, he just asked for you by full name and said it was a personal matter. I figured it was best to get you and see what you thought." The receptionist shrugged once more, as Maribelle got up from her chair and approached him at the door, the two of them heading down the hall and to the main waiting area of the office. Once there, he pointed towards a well-dressed man with his back turned towards them, reading informational fliers that were hanging from the wall. "That's him, do you recognize him? Should I call security?"
"N-no, I definitely do recognize him, I'll speak with him myself. Thanks for getting me as he asked you to." The receptionist nodded, going back to his desk to return to his work, while she inhaled deeply through her nose, trying to figure out how to go through with what she needed to. She was in her professional setting, doing anything immature or playful could and would look bad on her part, but she had rarely, if ever, been professional around this person before, so she wasn't sure how she'd do that without feeling awkward.
She decided to approach him, tapping his shoulder to get him to turn around and look at her, smiling when he saw it was her. "Ahem, I'm sorry, but unless you're going to break the news to me that you have some side woman in your life, you shouldn't be here for my services," she said to him, putting on the straightest face she could manage in the moment. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave and to stop wasting my time."
"Never change, Maribelle, you can't quite keep yourself from cracking up at your attempts at joking with me," he replied, fully turning around so that they were standing face to face, opening his arms up to hug her, something she shook her head in refusal at. "That's fair, I do suppose you are in your workplace and I'm the stranger here. Don't need to start your fellow associates on thinking that you're a promiscuous woman, do we?"
The only other person present was the receptionist, and he seemed to be scrolling through email lists at his computer, rather than watching what was going on, but on the chance that he was listening she didn't want to get too far into teasing banter. "You're right, we don't need any of them thinking that, seeing as everyone here knows I'll be gone for the next week on a trip for my anniversary. Let's take our conversation somewhere else."
He nodded, looking around for where they could go, but before he had the chance to suggest stepping outside she was heading back towards her office, beckoning for him to follow her with hand gestures. Even though he wasn't there for any sort of professional meeting, he decided it would be best to follow along, and so he did, ending up inside her small office with her still at the door. "So, this is where you work? A rather…boring place, wouldn't you say? I'd expect at least some flowers or some decorations, it being you who works here."
"Cut to the chase, Frederick, it's not every day that you just stumble into the law office someone works at and ask for them for casual conversation. My full name, really? Was that necessary? Did you think I'd go by something else while I'm at work?" The playfulness had worn off, but Maribelle was still speaking in an upbeat tone, her snappish words coming off not as harsh as they could have been. "You should explain yourself, right now, before I call Lissa and tell her you're over here seducing me. No, wait, better, I call Vaike and tell him, he'll come rip you a new one so fast that—"
"Don't call either of them. Vaike is already aware I'm here, and Lissa…you need to let me speak before you even think about informing her."
"—wait, what?" Maribelle's hang-up was on the first part of his response, the second half never even registering within her mind. "Why does Vaike know? Why did you go to him about coming to see me rather than coming to me about it?"
"I needed to be sure that you weren't planning for my arrival before it happened, so that whatever answer you give me is completely honest and off-the-cuff, not something you were able to decide in advance." Drawing a chair up to the side of the desk, Frederick sat down in it, properly placing both of his hands on his knee to let them rest as he looked across the desk at Maribelle, her still standing and now looking at him with suspicion in her eyes. "Don't assume it's anything bad. It's quite the opposite, really, but as the only person I could think of whose opinion on this would be trusted you were my only choice. And as you're leaving town tonight I had to act quick, hence my arrival here."
She let her eyes widen a bit, the suspicion fading from her face. "You need my opinion on something? Look, all I'm good for is opinions on laws regarding children, and maybe giving my husband a good time, but only one of those is something I can actually talk to you about. What's your real reason for being here?"
"Stop acting so accusatory, Mari." The tone Frederick took on in his short statement was harsh, unlike the carefree one he'd been using up to that point. It caught Maribelle by surprise, hearing him use the proper version of her name that she'd done her hardest to move past (but the people who'd known her since childhood would never have grown out of knowing it). "You are not letting me explain myself before you're jumping to conclusions about why I'm here. I don't need to know anything about the law, or about your bedroom escapades, I need to know about something that Lissa would like."
But two could play at the standoffish game that he was starting, and she wasn't going to turn him down. "Get more specific, she likes all sorts of things. Cute animals, pretty flowers, pastel colors, she's into all of those things and more. How specific are you looking for me to go with this? I could tell you individual things if you wanted."
"You know that you're being difficult by giving that sort of answer, so why do you bother with it? You started answering before you let me finish making my request."
"No, what you did was pause dramatically after making a statement and allowed for me to speak, it doesn't count as me not letting you finish if you never intend on finishing until I've said something to cut you off." Maribelle crossed her arms over her chest, bobbling her head a bit so that her ringlet curls bounced off her shoulders and onto her back. "Now go ahead, I guess, and finish requesting what you need me to do so I can do it."
Frederick opened his mouth to speak, only to close it without a word, his jaw visibly tensing up as he thought about what he was going to say. This only made her even less amused with what was going on, but just as she was readying herself to come up with another remark he dropped all sense of being coy with his intentions and laid it down for her: "I was hoping you would assist me in coming up with an appropriate setting for a proposal. For Lissa. Who you know better than I could ever wish to."
Frozen where she stood, all Maribelle could manage to do in the moment was look from her desk to Frederick, back down to her desk, then further down to her feet to make sure she was still standing and that she hadn't fallen in the surprise of that statement. "Y-you're going to propose to her? But you two haven't been together that long, are you sure it's a good idea to do that?"
"The thought that I am putting too much faith in what our relationship was before we started dating has crossed my mind at several points, but I cannot deny the fact that when we are together, we've always been happier than when we are apart." She still hadn't moved (aside from her eyes), so he couldn't tell how she was taking the news. "Please, Mari, I need to make this just as special as she is, but I have no clue where to start."
"You want me to help you come up with how you're going to propose to my best friend." A statement, not a question, as Maribelle worked through what was happening there in her office for her own sake. "You want me to help you with this, on my anniversary, right before I'm going to leave for a week. You want me to come up with how you're going to ask her to marry you, which you're probably going to do when I'm not around to see it. You want my help, so that you can drag her through her happiness to break her heart later."
"Now you're taking this the wrong way, stop that." Frederick reached out with one hand, offering it to Maribelle as a peaceful gesture; she locked eyes with it and did what any mature adult would do in her current position, smacking it out of the way. "I assumed you would be thrilled for this development, given how hard you lobbied for her to realize how I felt about her, why have you suddenly changed your tune on this?"
She wasn't sure how she was supposed to answer, but the conflicted feelings bubbling inside of her were something that she was going to have to address right then. "It's not that I've changed my tune, I just…don't know if she's going to be suited for marriage right yet. What if you go through all this effort to ask her and she turns you down because she thinks you're joking? What if you make it to the wedding and she backs out then? She loves you but I don't know if she loves you."
"How would you know that, you barely keep in touch with her unless she prompts you to." It was a low blow, but Frederick was speaking the truth. "You've never once invited her and I over for a couples' dinner, despite you being friends with both of us. You exclude her, you exclude me, and honestly, if it weren't for the fact that I know you two know each other like the backs of your own hands, I wouldn't bother coming to you about this."
"Put yourself in my shoes for a second, will you? You're asking me to help arrange the proposal between two friends I've had since childhood, don't you think that's a little, I don't know, stressful of a situation?" While there was no defending that she was being a tad unreasonable, it was true that Maribelle was being faced with something that not very many people had to go through. "I think of you, I think of so many things that aren't you dating Lissa, I think of you and Chrom being jerks to me because I wasn't one of you boys, I think of you offering to take me home when I wasn't able to drive myself, I think of what we did when we were younger. I don't think of how you're madly in love with my best friend."
He countered that with a slow nod and a quick response that he gave even as he was still nodding. "And how do you think I felt when someone snatched you up without allowing for me to give my blessing to him for it?"
"We'd been together the whole time I was in college, why are you acting like you never had the chance to talk to Vaike about 'snatching' me or whatever?"
"Oh, trust me, we talked plenty about his relationship with you, he would always brag about it to anyone who would listen. But think back to what we were just saying, about how this is between two friends you've had since you were a child. Now think about what he did, think about how he never considered the opinion of someone who'd cared about you since you were a child when he proposed to you." She could have replied that his public, for-everyone proposal had been done with everyone's input, but Frederick would then have been able to reply that she was referring to the second proposal, not the first.
And the details of the first were meant to be kept private, something that only they knew the full extent of. "I…see your point now," she said, feeling herself getting flustered as she thought about what had been happening the first time she'd been proposed to. "So you want to do this once, do it right, and do it how she'll love it."
"That's exactly it. I wouldn't have come to you right now if I intended on doing this multiple times, but doing it multiple times seems like a waste of everyone else's time." He was ignoring that she was clearly flustering herself with thoughts about what he'd made her think back on. "Now would you be so kind as to assist me in planning this, or are you going to stay out of it and promise not to use it against me in the future?"
"I'll help you, but hold on a second." Having to compose herself before she got too off-track with what was now prominently on her mind, she walked away from the desk and took a few steps around the back half of her office, trying to clear her thoughts and get herself back in the moment. Once she figured she was going to be of some use, she retook her position at her desk, staring him down across the paper-covered surface. "Have you asked Chrom if this is okay? That's his little sister you're talking about marrying, and he's your closest friend. You can't cross that line unless he says so."
"I have thrown the idea around with him, he understands that it's ultimately not his decision and what he wants for his sister doesn't matter as much as what she wants for himself, but he sees no issues with it. In fact, he told me that becoming legal brothers might be the best thing to happen to our relationship." Frederick laughed, dry and almost forced, as if he wasn't speaking the truth, but Maribelle knew he wouldn't be lying to her in a situation where she could do fact-checking for herself. "He just wants me to make sure it's what Lissa wants, and that she's happy with whatever happens. Only the best for his sister."
Laughing as well, Maribelle replied, "Sounds exactly like what someone who really doesn't care would say on the situation. He's so focused on his life, and his family, and his job, that he can't be bothered with thinking too much about hers anymore. What a shame, he used to be a real protective older brother for her back in the day."
"And you used to be a loyal best friend to her, but people change as they get older, it seems." Her eyes widened at the bluntness of his statement, and he could tell that she was shocked that he decided he was going to cut her so deeply with those words. "Oh, you know I mean no harm by that. As an older brother figure in your life, I would hope that you'd understand that I enjoy joking around with you."
She did understand, but there was still a line that she felt him saying that had crossed, especially as he was there to get her to help him with something. "There are jokes, and then there's you being rude, and I think we both know what category what you just did falls under," she said to him, trying her hardest to sound stern as she spoke. "Now apologize, or I will have to ask you to leave and stop wasting my time here."
"What should I apologize for? For telling you the truth?" A silent moment passed between the two, where they stared at each other, him unflinching in his stance and her trying to decide how to respond; she retaliated by reaching for her phone, mouthing the words "calling security" at him. "There's no need for that, Maribelle. Don't cause a scene just because I reminded you that you've been severely slacking on your duties as best friend to my sweet Lissa."
"Don't refer to her like that to try and get me to stop trying to get rid of you." Her hand was on the receiver, but she hadn't picked it up and she certainly hadn't dialed anything. "I get that you want me to help you out in all this, but you've got to do something to really deserve it, and right now you haven't done a thing."
"Does her happiness not matter to you?" he asked, reclining in his chair and losing all sense of formality as he sat. "Yours has always mattered to her, even if you haven't allowed her to know what's going on in your life. She asks about you frequently, always mentioning that she wishes she was still involved with you despite being busy all the time."
"Who's she asking? You? Because you don't do anything about it if she is, this is the first time I've talked to you in a long time!" Maribelle sharply inhaled after her exclamation, grabbing the phone and picking it up, still not having dialed a single number. "You either explain to me right now why I should help you propose to my best friend, or I'm calling her and letting her know you're here."
That threat was worse than the one she'd made to call security, and he shifted in his seat, now leaning forward until his head was almost resting on the edge of the desk. "I would prefer you not do that, she doesn't need to know what I'm planning for her. You should help me because you want to see her happy, you want to see her in love, and you want to inevitably be invited to take part in her wedding when it happens."
"I do love an opportunity to get dressed up," she conceded, setting the phone back down much to his relief. "I mean, I'm getting dressed up this week when I'm on my trip, but dressing for weddings is…different than dressing for casual functions. I guess I could try and come up with something for you, if you promise you'll fight for me to be in the wedding."
"If not on her side, then on mine, you have my word." Sitting back up so that he could hold out a hand, all fingers bent closed except an outstretched pinky, Frederick waited for an extended period of time as Maribelle looked at his gesture before replicating it with her own hand, intertwining their pinkies. "You'll make a lovely fixture in the ceremony when it happens, no matter who you're there for. Now shall we get to discussing this, and quickly? I know you're almost out of here for your trip."
"My trip can wait a few extra minutes, I'm helping with my friends getting married!" Jerking her hand away after their lengthy pinky promise, Maribelle clasped it into her other hand and spun around on her toes, before getting serious with a throat-clearing cough. "Now where to begin, kindling romantic connections isn't something I typically do in my preferred line of work."
He chuckled, giving her a shrug. "That's why I asked you what she likes, I was thinking you'd be able to come up with something based on her interests. My issue is that a lot of her favorite things are intangible, or not anything I could easily replicate. Do you think something simple will have to do?"
"With Lissa, simple's good, but you should always strive for excellent. Which means, uh, we're really going to have to think on this one, because I'm sure she's imagined being proposed to as some fantastical experience. Not something in a park, not something at home, not something in the bedroom…" Her trailing off was in time with her remembering her own proposal, and the dreamy sigh she emitted not long after clued Frederick in to what had just happened.
Even with his best attempts to keep her focused on what he needed and not her own experience, he had to continuously have to remind her to think back to what Lissa would like, not what she'd gone through herself. Due to that, their discussion was constantly sidetracked and dragged on much longer than it should have, especially since she was supposed to be finishing up her work and getting out of the office during the time they were talking. Progress was made, however, and there was no denying that they'd come up with at least the first steps to creating a perfect proposal for someone who mattered to both of them.
As they finished up, she decided she'd walk him out of the building, rather than force him to go out by himself. While he saw it as a gesture of kindness, she had other reasons for why she was accompanying him to the door, and the moment she heard the receptionist still at his computer, typing away at something, she knew her moment was upon her. "That was a productive conversation we had," she said to him, seemingly out of the blue once they'd made it to the waiting area. "I hope you've learned some things from what I've told you."
"Er, yes, I could say that I have," he replied, not catching on that she wasn't being serious. "Maribelle, what are you getting at?"
"For someone of such a proper position in this society, it's a real shame that you've found yourself having to come to a lawyer who specializes in defending children, but I appreciate that you're taking enough responsibility in your actions to see me." Now he knew she was joking with him, based on how he was looking at her with quickly-narrowing eyes, and she had to struggle to not start laughing as she continued on. "However, I must confess that there's little I can do about unborn children, unless you have proof they are going to be born to an unfit mother, and even then it's dicey."
"You're not being funny right now." His reply was blunt, and there wasn't even a hint of an amused expression on his face as he spoke to her. "Is this really how you want to end our discussion, by pretending we were talking about something we weren't? I would consider that a rather low blow, even for you, Mari."
She winked at him, before checking to see if the receptionist had so much as looked in their direction. He was engrossed in his work, which meant that what she was doing was useless at best, and was most likely doing nothing but irritate Frederick. Not like she was going to complain about a free chance to do that, though. "Let me know how everything goes once you've taken care of it, I'm curious as to how your issues will turn out."
"I cannot believe you, is this really necessary right here? Right now? People could still be listening and they're going to think I'm the kind of man to partake in unsavory endeavors, which is far from the truth." Her second wink in his direction was met with an eyeroll and a turn for the exit, which was stopped by her grabbing onto his arm and pulling for him to come back. "Unhand me at once and let me leave, Maribelle. Your little game isn't as fun for me as you'd like it to be."
"It's all just a joke," she replied, slowly letting go of him so he could make his way out of the office. "Seriously though, let me know how it goes, whenever you get around to asking her. You've got to make an honest woman of my best friend, and soon!" That might have been worse of a comment to make than any of her jokes, because it was genuine and anyone who might have been listening could tell that she was being serious about it. Frederick stopped where he stood and turned back around, raising an angered finger to point at her, and she grinned. "Get back to me about what you're trying to do once you've done it, I'd love to keep in touch with you."
The finger was dropped and Frederick left without another word, although when the door closed on him the receptionist looked away from his computer and at Maribelle, trying not to laugh as he did. "Remember how I mentioned that he asked for you by full name?" he asked, catching Maribelle's attention just with the sound of his voice. "That was the first time I'd ever heard anyone do that for you, putting the space between the parts of your name. Who was that guy, and why was he here?"
"A childhood friend of mine, nothing unusual. He was here for personal matters, as I'm sure he told you when he arrived." She was watching the receptionist now, waiting for him to say anything else, but he remained silent, glancing at his computer screen. "Well, did he tell you that? It's not like him to not be transparent with people."
"He did tell me," he answered, his attention waning from his screen but not focusing on her yet again. "Introduced himself with his full name, which sounded really familiar for some reason. Threw him into an online search, which I'm sure is creepy on a bunch of levels but I was curious, okay?" Maribelle knew what was coming next, she knew why someone would have heard of Frederick before but wouldn't have recognized him when they saw his face. "Did you know that he's the right-hand man to one of the most prominent and influential men in all of Ylisse? Here, in our office, wanting to talk to you for personal reasons?"
"I never would have guessed. Next, you'll look up pictures of them together and find me in them." She beamed at the receptionist, who stared blankly at her for a moment before going right back to his typing and searching on his computer. "If you don't believe me, that's fine, but I've known those men for a lot longer than you could believe. Since childhood, even. We all used to be like this—" she raised her hands and showed him crossed fingers, "—but since one of them took over the chair of the healthcare system in Ylisse and the other ascended to his high-profile assistant, I can't say we've been as close as we were."
"Oh wow, miss Maribelle! I didn't know you were friends with someone who's basically royalty!" She inwardly cringed at the idea, knowing that the person being referred to would shake off the concept that he was royalty just because of what he'd inherited from his family. "I can't believe that you know these men, that's just amazing!"
"Yes, yes, fawn over them as much as you'd like, they're just friends to me." Awkwardly shuffling back towards her office, she managed to catch a split-second's look at what was on his screen before it was gone, replaced with actual work: he wasn't just looking up pictures of people, but rather entire biographies of them to see what roles they played in their society. That was something she'd never considered, her place in that kind of history, and she really hoped that no one had thrown her name down onto the online profiles of her more high-ranking friends. Part of her job that she loved was her lack of involvement in cases involving people with any kind of fame, and she wanted to keep it that way.
Checking up on that was something she'd have to do after her trip though, and since it was time for her to be heading home she needed to get everything finished before she could leave. The conversation with Frederick had taken much more of her time than it should have, but scolding herself for it would have only resulted in more time being wasted on the matter. She needed to finish sorting paperwork and case files for while she was gone and for her return, then get home and finishing packing her bags for the trip. The papers weren't hard to organize, and after she considered them as done as they were going to get she grabbed her things and went to leave.
The receptionist was still at his desk, one of the biography windows his active screen. "Can I ask you one thing before you leave for the week?" His question stopped her before she had the chance to exit the building, and she quietly sighed, cursing her luck before telling him that he could ask one single thing. "If you've known these guys for so long, why didn't you marry one of them? The women they're with are so…plain compared to you."
The comparison was not anything she wanted to hear in that moment, and so she kindly told him to not speak to her in that manner before leaving, going to her car and sitting in it in silence for a few minutes before driving off. Everything that had happened in there, from Frederick showing up to the receptionist getting star-struck, it wasn't anything that she felt she needed in her life right then. She was happy to be of use in planning a proposal, but the timing for the discussion was all wrong and had thrown what she'd been intending to do with her day into total disarray. Now she was over half an hour off schedule and that time wasn't going to be easily made back up.
It was while she was driving home that she got lost in her thoughts about what had just happened there in the office. Not the part about her conversation with Frederick, but the part that came after that. The part where she'd looked at the screen her receptionist was working at and saw pages open on it that were titled with the names of people she'd grown up with. The page titled Chrom Lowell, that was about the man who held the highest non-medical position in the hospital system in Ylisse, that most likely talked about his dead parents and his murdered older sister, that was bound to have a section about his younger sister as well as his young family that he was so proud of. The page titled Frederick Ardmore, that was about his loyal assistant and best friend who'd been at his side as long as they'd both been alive, that most likely made mention of that same younger sister (and if it did, would soon mention her as his fiancée, which was astounding to Maribelle in that moment). Had there been a page about herself that he'd found in his search, or would she have just been a footnote in either of their histories?
The realization that if she became important enough to the legal system of Ylisse she could end up with her own online biographies, someone could search her and find information on her exactly like they could Chrom or Frederick made her stomach lurch but a sense of pride course through her. She'd come from a position of wealth, but she'd given up her claims to that money when she'd gotten married—was that something that would be denoted online? Could she look up her parents, look up anything about the Themis bloodline, and find information about herself and how she'd married for love and not for fortune? But that wasn't about her and what she'd done with herself, that was about where she'd come from and what those people had done. She needed to achieve fame and recognition by being herself and doing what she did best.
Her thinking lasted her most of the way home, but she found herself making a wrong turn and needing to enter the neighborhood a different way than usual thanks to her distraction. There was a stop that usually spelled trouble that she'd need to make, a blind corner that she'd have to hope no one would whip around when she had the right of way in the intersection, because people always went too fast around it and blew through the stop sign that they were supposed to wait at. Since she was already mentally distracted, sitting there felt like it was going to be more perilous than usual, and she braced herself for whatever danger she was going to face by narrowly missing yet another car running a stop.
The danger met her before she even went through the intersection, as she was slowing down to take the stop. There was someone right behind her, that seemed to be riding rather close to her back bumper but was meeting her step-for-step when it came to braking and accelerating; it wasn't until she looked in her rear-view mirror for more than a second that she recognized the front end of the vehicle as being the one that her husband used for work. Amused that he was going the same way she was, despite both of them hating the intersection they were having to go through, she rolled her window down and stuck a hand out to wave at him, hoping he'd find the gesture cute and wave back at her.
Instead, what she got was a sudden jolt forward as she was trying to slow down, the sound of brakes behind her squealing much louder than they should have been given that they were on residential streets. It wasn't a hard impact, and she was thankful that there was no one in front of her as she'd been slowing for that stop, but the first chance she had to get out of the car to see what had happened she knew she wasn't going to like what she was going to see.
There wasn't much damage to the first car she looked at, which wasn't her own but rather the one that had just slammed into her. Seeing that car that she recognized pushed right into hers made her stomach drop more than what she'd been thinking about before had, and she hoped that this hadn't just been Vaike not paying attention and hitting her on complete accident. That was when she heard the sound of metal dragging across the ground, followed by the attempted revving of an engine; as she tried to go investigate the source she was stopped by a strong arm wrapping itself around her. "Maribelle, please tell me you're okay after that, I know it wasn't a hard hit but I don't wanna be responsible for you gettin' hurt."
"I'm fine, don't worry," she told her husband, as he pulled her in closely for a hug. "What happened to you? Shouldn't you know how to drive a bit better than that?"
"Someone hit me and it hit me into ya, I'm sorry 'bout that." The revving sound was almost drowning out Vaike's words as he spoke, and he looked around, almost irritated with the sound. "You try and drive your car home the best y'can, I'll see if I can get info from the person who caused this and set everythin' straight. If we need authorities involved, y'know I've got some 'a them as contacts in my phone." He was letting go of her, already moving towards the back of his vehicle, where the source of the noise seemed to be.
She didn't want to go, but she assumed that he'd heard enough about traffic accidents from his friends that he knew what he was talking about. When she turned around to head back to her car she saw that the back end of it was pushed in, and she knew that once she'd moved it, it might have been completely unrecognizable as the car she'd received as a gift from graduating college. "Please don't do anything stupid out here by yourself, I won't be here to save you if you do," she said under her breath, skip-walking back to the driver's seat of the car and jumping right back in.
There wasn't much in the way of issues regarding how the car drove from there to the house, but she was certain that if she'd needed to go any further than that it might have been more difficult. Once she'd parked it outside of the house she had inspected the damage further and found that the trunk simply did not open anymore, and she was thankful that she hadn't had anything stored in it. The taillights were busted, the bumper hanging on but clearly displaced, and she was surprised that there didn't seem to be much more damage than that, but it was still noticeable and ultimately horrible damage to have on her car in the first place. But there wasn't much she could do about it in that moment, she'd driven home from the scene of the accident and she wasn't going to go against what she'd been told to do for the sake of solving things herself. She was going to have to wait for Vaike to get home, and then listen to him for what they were going to do about the accident.
That was a long period of time that she was sitting there waiting, out on the front step of the house because she didn't want to go inside and miss anyone coming by if they needed to speak with her. It was already late in the day and it was only getting later, she was still behind on what she needed to do for trip preparations and at this point she wasn't entirely sure they were still going to get to go, which was not a pleasant thought as they had already paid for their tickets for everything. Non-refundable decisions seemed to ultimately come to this end, something happening to ruin what they had expected to have happen.
Eventually she did see her husband's vehicle pull up, decal on the side that had his work information on it visible from where she was sitting. Behind him was an unfamiliar car, but based on the fact that it didn't seem damaged she had a hard time guessing who might have been in it. The two cars parked in the street and she went to greet Vaike before he could come up to the house, but as she approached him he held a hand out to stop her. "No, Maribelle, this ain't the time. We're finishin' up all the information compilin', if ya wanna be a help here you'll get the stuff outta your car so we've got it on file."
"Who's we?" she asked, changing her direction so that she ended up on the passenger side of her car, opening the door and getting into the glove box to find her stack of papers inside of it. "Which officer did you end up needing to call into this mess?"
"Who d'ya think? I only know like three 'a them, and one ain't even an actual officer, he just works at the jail." Even with her head in the car she'd still been heard by him and he'd still been able to properly reply to her question. "And even then, I'm handlin' this business, y'didn't see the dude's car and y'didn't almost get hit by him runnin' scared, y'were involved but y'weren't a witness in the end. Just gimme the papers and go inside."
She'd retrieved what she was looking for and was walking the papers over to him when she saw that in his other hand, not the one waiting for her to give him something, was a license plate that didn't belong to either of them. "Oh gods, he hit you hard enough to leave that behind? How did he not grab that and take it with him?"
"It was some kid who probably shouldn't've been drivin', apparently the car ain't registered t'anyone and looks like it was stolen or somethin' like that. Now can y'please do what I told ya and go inside? I've got this all under control." It wasn't typical for Vaike to take such strong ownership to something and as much as Maribelle wanted to get involved she didn't want to seem like she was doubting his capabilities.
But now that she was given clearance to be inside, she ran in and started packing everything up as fast and efficiently as she could, just in case they were still going to be able to take their trip. Every so often she would check outside through a window to see if they were still standing outside discussing what had happened, and it was from her inside vantage point that she eventually realized that she'd been forced inside because the officer he'd called on was the one person he could stand around talking to for hours and never get tired of. "Of course he called him, why would I expect anything less from my smart and charming husband?" she sarcastically asked, shaking her head at the sight before going back to packing.
Night was on the verge of falling when Vaike finally came inside the house, laughing about something that had been said while he'd been outside. Maribelle was at the door waiting for him, looking more concerned than disappointed in how long he'd taken to settle everything, but the moment he saw her his demeanor changed and he went to having a grim expression upon his face. "Good news, bad news, I guess," he said, closing the door and leaning against the wall, her watching him expectantly. "Good news, we ain't gonna be responsible for any 'a this 'cause we weren't the reason for it happenin', we just happened t'hit each other 'cause of that punk kid. Bad news, until they find the brat we're havin' t'shoulder the cost of fixin' up your car, and I'm gonna have t'pull into work funds t'fix mine. But that's not all bad, I wouldn't say, it's just a temp fix until they find 'im."
"That's a lot of money we're going to be spending up front, don't you think?" She wasn't that knowledgeable about what car repairs cost, but she could tell from what she'd seen of her car's back end that it was heavily damaged from having a larger vehicle pushed into it. "And we're supposed to be out of town this week! It's our anniversary and instead of romantic dinners and hotel rooms we're sitting at home dealing with someone having wrecked both our cars on us!"
"H-hey now, we don't need t'get so upset about things, ya should know that the Vaike always has a plan for this kind of thing." He grabbed her into a big hug, lifting her feet off the ground and spinning her around a couple times before setting her back down, still looking serious but at least a little more relaxed. "We're still gonna go on our trip, we've got people 'round here who'll bail us outta this situation. Just 'cause we can't call on your rich parents doesn't mean we don't have other rich people who want t'help us."
She was quiet for a moment, thinking about who it was that he could have asked to assist them, but with so many possibilities she decided to leave it at his vague explanation. "Well, okay, if you insist that we have people to rely on who am I to question it? I've already packed our things, if you still wanted to head out tonight. What we need right this moment is a vacation from our vacation, it seems."
"Let's at least get t'the actual trip 'fore you're sayin' that sorta thing, hm?" He cracked a smile that made her giggle, his attitude towards everything that had happened so entertaining to her. "You grab the bags, I'll make some room in the back 'a my car, since yours ain't exactly usable right now. Hopefully nothin' we're bringin' gets too dirty from the spot we're gonna haveta put it, but it ain't like we've got a choice."
They did have a choice, they could have decided to not go and call the whole thing a wash, but admitting defeat would have meant they'd be out money that they then could have been using to cover the costs of the now-wrecked car. At least going on the trip meant that they had a week away from responsibilities, a week away from work and routine, a week where the only people that mattered to them were themselves and each other. Time spent on shows, on exploring the cute resort they'd found outside of their home base, on reconnecting and getting to relax together.
And when they were on their way home a week later, rejuvenated and ready to take on everything they'd left behind when they committed to their trip, Maribelle was greeted with a mess of messages from one excited best friend, who'd been surprised with a simple proposal in one of her favorite places in Ylisstol, after a day spent doing all the things she loved doing with people she cared about. In one of those messages, tacked on at the end almost as if it was a last-minute addition, was a note about how she was willing to help her in exchange for what she'd done to make the proposal happen.
What if the person that Vaike had expected to help them out had been Lissa all along, knowing that Maribelle had just helped Frederick to help her out? It was possible, and she did consider it, but that was an awful lot of he-said, she-said just to cover the cost of an unfortunate car wreck.
A/N: okay for serious now I don't know when the next chapter will be posted. I just really love this story and want to share as much of it as I can with the people who are reading it c:
