Lissa never got any response from her husband in regards to her requesting that he come join them at Chrom's house, which bothered her immensely but she figured that pressing the issue further than she already had would only irritate him. However, she did receive messages from people he'd scorned, people he'd blown off in his attempt to get away from everyone, and when her brother called her asking her if she'd heard anything from him she had to admit that she hadn't. That she hadn't honestly wanted to. That she knew where she stood with him and that she and O'wain weren't the top priority that day.

"I'm rather sorry to hear you think like that," Chrom said, trying to remain professional even though this was his younger sister he was talking to. "But if you hear anything from Lon'qu, please do not hesitate to tell me or anyone else here at the station. We're missing him and two others right now, and Stahl's trying his best to find the others based on some shoddy directions he's been given. It's a…long story you'll have to hear later."

"Yeah, something tells me right now isn't the time for you to be catching me up on station gossip," she agreed, wanting to get off the phone right then so that she could resume what she should have been doing, rather than fielding phone calls. "You get back to whatever you're doing and I'll get back to what I was doing, okay?"

She could hear a deep breath taken in, followed by a simple request that made her heart hurt to hear: "That's fine, but before I go I want to speak to Lucina. Even if we don't make it home today I want her, and Inigo too, to know that their mother and I really do love them."

"I'm sure they know that without you having to tell them right now, but…" Lissa looked around the bedroom she'd barricaded herself in the moment that people had turned their attention towards trying to contact her, not wanting anyone to see or hear her as she was dealing with this nonsense. "Let me go down and get Lucina for you, just because you asked me to." He was thanking her on the other end multiple times, the sound of true desire to speak with his child in his voice, and once she'd headed down the stairs and found her niece she almost felt bad to hand the phone off to her.

Some voice in her head was telling her to try and find a way to reunite the family for the holiday, but she knew it wasn't possible as things currently were. She had eight children under her care at the moment, and even if she were able to get through to her husband and get him to help her, there wasn't any way to safely transport everyone. Even with repeated trips, it would take getting into someone else's car and grabbing something out of it that didn't even belong to them to make things work, but then…what would come of that? Seven kids abandoned at the station as she, O'wain, and Lon'qu went back to their house, safe and sound? Six of those kids had their parents there, but the seventh didn't.

Just thinking about that seventh child made one of her fists curl up, a negative reaction she was starting to question the reason for. This was hatred she was harboring for a baby, an actual infant who hadn't done anything wrong to her—and whose parents, honestly, hadn't done anything wrong either. "Auntie Lissa, what's got you upset?" Inigo asked, as he had been sitting right with his sister when she received the phone from their aunt. "You don't look very happy right now, is it something to do with the call you got?"

"No, trust me, it's just your father calling," she replied, trying to unclench her fist but finding it impossible to do so. "Say, where did all the other kids get off to? You know Morgan can't play nice with anyone, but she's with everyone else? What's up with that?"

Inigo shrugged, showing zero investment in what was going on anywhere but with his sister. "Last I saw, Morgan and Cynthia were going to watch the little kids and, uh, that's really all I saw." He shrugged again, looking his aunt straight in the face as he added, "Knowing them, they're probably playing dolls with them, again. Like they always do."

While she was fine with the idea that the bigger girls were playing with the younger kids, Lissa was more than aware of the fact that she didn't see her son or the other smallest child there in the room, and that meant that the girls had both of them there. Together. Like she did not want them to be. "Will you do me a favor and bring me my phone back once you two are done on it? I trust that you wouldn't do anything bad with it once the call's over, so could you really please?" It was slightly ridiculous, having to beg her nephew to do something like that, but she couldn't stand to wait around for the call to be over, having realized what was going on elsewhere in the house.

"I guess so," he told her, his eyes focusing on his sister and how she was nodding eagerly at whatever was being said on the other side of the phone. "If Lucy ever gets done talking, anyway! Can I please get to talk to Father while he's calling?"

She left the room before she heard any response from Lucina, but she was certain that Chrom was on the line laughing at what he could hear of his son's demand. There weren't many places in the house that a group of six kids could be hiding without being noticed, and she hoped it wasn't the kitchen that they were playing in. That was the first place she checked, and nothing seemed to be amiss about it, eliciting a sigh to escape her—before she realized that just because they hadn't gone to the kitchen yet didn't mean they weren't planning on doing so soon.

They weren't anywhere on the lower floor of the house, she quickly came to notice, after searching every possible place they could have been. There were locked doors that she could have tried to get through, but if she was going to have to put up a struggle to bypass them and these other kids didn't have Lucina or Inigo helping them, it made no sense to assume that they'd found a way in somewhere. But if they weren't downstairs, that meant that they had to be upstairs, and she hadn't heard anyone come up while she'd been up there, nor had she heard anyone scrambling around when she'd started to come down. "There's got to be somewhere I'm not looking," she said to herself, standing at the foot of the stairs looking up them. "There's just no way they all made it up there without me noticing…"

The fear that they had gone outside flickered into her mind, and she scrambled towards the front door, throwing it open and seeing undisturbed snow on the other side. No one had been out there since the snow had stopped falling, which meant the kids had to have been in the house, unless they'd gone out into the back yard; checking to make sure they hadn't done that was now the top priority, and so she ran to the kitchen, seeing the back door firmly locked and sighing in relief that she found it that way. There wasn't any chance of them having locked it on themselves, she knew how difficult that door was to close when it was locked, and if Inigo or Lucina had locked the other kids out they would have fessed up to it by then.

That meant that upstairs was the only option there really was, and after checking to see that her niblings were still using her phone to speak with their father, she started up the stairs, putting enough force into every step that anyone would hear her coming. When she was halfway up the staircase she could hear what sounded like giggles coming from somewhere on the upper floor, which made her heart flutter to hear because it meant the kids were okay after all. She hadn't royally failed at babysitting all of them after all, even if she thought she had for a moment there.

Her approach to one of the bedroom doors up on the upper floor was halted when she heard what sounded like breaking glass on the other side of the hall. "What did you do?" Cynthia's voice called out, sounding panicked. "Oh my gosh Morgan you are going to be in so much trouble when miss Lissa sees this!"

"I didn't do anything!" Morgan retorted, her voice raising over the sound of younger kids crying, startled by whatever had happened in the room they were in. "All I did was try to open the thing, I didn't know that—"

Closing her eyes as she tried mentally bracing herself for what she was about to see, Lissa opened the bedroom door that the kids were on the other side of, cracking open one eye to see Morgan and Cynthia standing in front of a broken glass-paned cabinet, one that was filled with little trinkets and expensive dolls. The door opening had stunned Morgan into silence, and Cynthia was looking at who'd entered with wide, fear-filled eyes. "Miss Lissa, she broke the cabinet," she said once she'd mentally registered who had come in. "She probably didn't mean to but she did. And she got glass everywhere, too."

Everywhere was a bit of an overstatement, but it was excusable as Cynthia was a bit panicked at what her twin had done. Of course, once Lissa approached and saw that there was glass directly in front of and touching the two youngest children in the room, she didn't think so much of the overstatement, bending down to carefully extract O'wain from the glass pile before the inquisitive boy decided he was going to try eating what had fallen on him. "Someone do me a favor and pick the girl up," she ordered, mentally blanking on what Kjelle's name was and also not wanting to show that she was beginning to think twice about being so negative towards the baby. "We need to make sure she isn't cut up or anything because of this."

Cynthia nodded, getting down next to Kjelle to pick her up, but as she knelt onto the floor she yelped in surprise, jumping back up and crying out, "I landed on some glass, ouch!" Her cry only fueled the fire of the two middle children in the room crying louder, which in turn made the baby (who was still on the floor) start screaming, overwhelmed with everything that was going on. It was then, while looking down at her in slight disgust, that Lissa noticed that the same glass that had pricked Cynthia's leg was dangerously close to where the baby was, and if anything were to happen to her…

"O'wain, sit still for a moment so I can fix things," she told her son, setting him on the bed in the room and hoping that he wasn't going to disobey her and cause more trouble. After a few seconds of him moving around but staying up on the bed, she felt comfortable enough to bend down again, this time to get Kjelle up off the floor, but as she picked the screaming baby up she could tell that something wasn't right with what she'd walked into.

Her fears were proven to be correct when she adjusted how she was holding the baby and felt the unmistakable feeling of blood on her hands, making her stomach churn. "M-miss Lissa, don't move at all," Morgan stammered, using a shaking hand to point at the glass that had collected at her feet after she'd lifted Kjelle up off the ground. "I d-didn't see that she'd moved her legs at all, she must've kicked them into the glass…"

"No, she couldn't have, there's no way that she could have!" Lissa didn't want to act brashly in the moment, she didn't want to flip around a small child to see the extent of her self-caused injuries, but she knew that she had to, so that she knew what to do. She'd done enough training in first aid to know how to handle this situation, she just needed to remain calm and sensible long enough to evaluate and treat what had happened. But acknowledging that something had happened would require her to explain exactly what that was to the parents once they found out, and she knew she'd be held responsible then, even though it wasn't her fault at all.

She'd frozen in place, conflicted about what to do, and not even the confused questioning of what she was doing by her own child was going to break her from her internal panic. "Mama?" O'wain kept repeating, moving himself closer to the edge of the bed with every time he spoke, until there wasn't any more bed for him to sit on. Shakily, he stood on the bed's edge and reached for Lissa, but he wasn't on solid footing and he fell forward, his mother unaware of what was happening until she'd heard both Morgan and Cynthia gasp and yell out for her to try catching him before he fell.

There was a choice to be made, either dive and try catching him at the risk of losing hold of the baby she was already holding, or let him fall without doing anything. She was gathering that she was going to be in a lot of trouble for the damage she'd already caused, what good was it to her if she added even more damage to the list? Helpless in the situation, she had to watch her son fall straight into the glass shards that were on the ground, an outstretched arm he'd put out to try catching something for himself taking the brunt of the fall. Within a second of him hitting the ground he was screaming out in pain, which was only adding to the chaos that was unfolding in that bedroom.

Him falling caused the two kids downstairs to come running up to see what was going on, still on the phone with their father when they came through the door to see multiple people now with some blood on their hands (or legs), multiple children crying at varying volumes, and one shell-shocked adult who had pushed the baby she was holding off to the first person who'd take her in exchange for picking up her son and frantically picking out as much glass as she could from his hand and arm, cutting her own fingers open in the process.

"Uh, Father, do you think you can get someone to come help us?" Lucina asked, once she'd been able to process what she'd walked into. "It looks like there's been an accident and—"

"No, please no, don't tell him! Hang the phone up now!" She was speaking in her panicked state but Lissa didn't want to have her brother, and by extension everyone at the station, knowing what she'd allowed to happen completely on accident. If she hadn't been trying so hard to maintain some sense of composure she would have been crying just like almost everyone else, breaking down into tears about how she'd failed so badly as not just a babysitter but as a mother as well.

The look of fear and panic on her face was enough to get Lucina to heed her words, hanging up the phone without saying anything else to her father. Once she showed that she had ended that call, work to clean up the mess and try to restore everything to some kind of order had to begin, before small children started bleeding out to death. Getting someone else involved could wait until the severity of the situation was figured out.

But for Chrom, who'd been hung up on right as he was being asked to help, he wasn't there to see the scene for himself. He'd been relying on what his daughter was telling him, trying to listen to her voice rather than the screams and cries he could hear in the background; having her mention an accident, in his own home of all places, and be told to hang up when admitting to that was concerning, to say the least. "Why has everything had to fall apart right now?" he asked, clenching his phone in his hand and feigning throwing it into the ground. "It's Christmas, for Naga's sake, why can't things go right for this one day?"

"What's happening now?" Robin's attention had been on his own phone, but the moment Chrom had started speaking he'd begun to focus on him instead. "It's nothing to do with the others, is it? You said it could be up to hours before we heard more on that, there's no way they rushed into things…"

"No, it's nothing to do with them, sadly." Inside of his mind, Chrom was wishing that what had happened had been related back to the officers he'd sent out, but he'd heard what had befallen them and figured that they quite possibly weren't even rescued yet, let alone in a position to talk about what the outcome was. "It's the kids at my house. I was still on the call with Lucina and something happened, there was a lot of crying, and Lissa…I had to hear my own sister insist on keeping something from me." He took in a deep breath, steadying himself and trying not to let what he'd heard get to him too much. "We need to send someone there to check on them. Right now."

Robin looked around the office they were in, where it was just the two of them, and shook his head after a few moments. "There's no one we can ask. What, do you suggest we call up your brother-in-law and have him go check? He abandoned our officers in the snow! And Stahl, he's having to set that all straight as we speak, do you want him having to run from the hospital to your house before coming back here to update us on everything? Those are our options right now, Chrom! We don't have anyone to ask!"

"There's no need to raise your voice with me, I know both of those points." Bringing his free hand to his face to massage his forehead, Chrom weighed every option he had available to him before he said anything. "The roads are bound to not be as snow-packed as they were before, perhaps one of us could drive slowly and go investigate? It's not that far of a trip, although it would be two, maybe three times as long in any kind of snow without the proper vehicle for it. I could always make the trip if no one else volunteered."

"If no one else…really? No one's going to volunteer to drive on snowy roads to see what's happened at your house! What we need to do is get through to someone that's there. Call your sister again, see if she'll talk to you about it?" It was a better suggestion than risking lives was, but Chrom had the sinking feeling that he knew what would happen if he tried calling: he'd be ignored, forced to go to voicemail, and he wouldn't get the answers he was looking for. Still, there was no harm in giving it a shot, which he did, and when he reached the exact outcome he'd expected he was only moderately disappointed.

He was, of course, more worried than that. "I'm going to see if anyone has any other ideas for what to do. Once all the other parents are made aware of the situation, they might be able to help with solving this." He went to leave the room but Robin stopped him with a plea, a begged demand to not do anything reckless. "I'm surprised that you aren't getting over-emotional about this, seeing as your daughters could be involved in this," he said, looking at Robin with a shaky, half-hearted smile. "Don't you want to know they're okay?"

"I do, I really do, but I know that jumping to brash decisions won't get any of us any closer to knowing what's going on. We have to handle this logically and carefully, and face it, your track record of handling things 'carefully' today is pretty poor." Robin was referring to the other chain of events they were still trying to sort out, the ones that they knew had started with escorting someone home and had ended with a distress call because people had been abandoned in the snow while unprepared. "Rushing out and trying to go see things for ourselves will just end up with more people needing rescuing."

"What if not trying leads to something else, though? What if we stay here, where we're safe and warm, and whatever's happening out there only gets worse?" Still by the office door, Chrom glanced at it and asked himself if it was worth leaving when in the midst of this kind of argument, but decided that it was best to stay where he was. After taking his seat next to Robin once more, he shook his head and said, "I hope that Lissa and the kids aren't in any kind of real trouble. But Lucina wouldn't say that unless they were, and Lissa wouldn't act like that unless—"

He was cut off by the door to the office coming open, the sound of a cough to announce someone's presence filling the air. "Chrom, Robin, do either of you know what's going on right now?" Frederick asked, trying to maintain his composure as he spoke. "Maribelle's out there losing her mind and, quite frankly, it's beginning to concern me."

"Did my sister contact her, by chance?" Chrom suggested, gears in his mind starting to turn. "Because I happened to be talking to Lucina with Lissa's phone when something, I don't know what, occurred and when Lucina attempted to tell me about it she was silenced by my own sister."

It took a moment but Frederick ended up shaking his head at the question. "No, she wasn't approached by Lissa, but rather she called her herself to check in on the boys. All was fine for a few sentences before she started screaming at her, and now she's locked herself in my office and won't come out, and the screaming hasn't stopped yet. Do you…do you think that whatever happened affected one of our children, is that why she's having such a negative reaction to it?"

"I wouldn't jump to that conclusion, we all know Maribelle well enough to know that if it did have something to do with them she would have left already." Robin was once again trying to be the one to convince everyone to calm down and handle things rationally, but he could tell just looking at Frederick that there was something more going on than he'd let on. "So if she's locked herself in your office, there's no harm done to your children, simple as that. But that leaves five others who could've been harmed, right?"

The two men he was speaking with weren't as quick at thinking in terms of numbers as he was, so he watched as they counted on their fingers who all was meant to be at the house under Lissa's care right now. Robin was certain that Chrom was going to count correctly, so he was focused on watching what Frederick did, waiting for the inevitable slip-up that he'd begun to suspect was about to happen. The way he knew the counting should have happened was the counter including their own children, then adding the other two pairs and the one solo child, resulting in a count of seven. But Frederick started with both thumbs out, and added six more fingers, which resulted in eight being accounted for. "I suppose the only logical option here would be that something happened to O'wain," Frederick said, looking at his hands, going over who all he knew to be at the house a second time. "That would explain why Maribelle would be so upset but not upset enough to endanger herself."

"Or it could be whoever's not supposed to be there." Saying this caught Chrom off guard, and he looked to Robin with confusion in his glance, while Robin stared confidently towards Frederick, whose face was slowly growing more and more surprise at the accusation. "I've never seen someone start a count with their thumb on both hands out before, especially not you, so that was rather strange. Wouldn't that throw your numbers off?"

"Er, I suppose it would," he replied, looking at the eight fingers he was still holding up. "I know that it's just seven kids there, I must have simply made a mistake in what I counted with." That answer wasn't good enough for Robin, someone who thrived on deductions and solving cases through the use of observation, but Frederick was hopeful enough that he wasn't going to dig any further than he just had. "See, let me tell you who's there to prove my point…I assure you, it was merely a mistake."

Raising an eyebrow, Robin didn't say anything to counter him and instead invited him to go through with his insisted clarification of who was at the house. There was something he was waiting to see (or more specifically hear) happen, and he wasn't going to let Frederick off the hook until it had happened. "Are you sure this is necessary?" Chrom asked, still looking confused. "People make mistakes, you don't need to push him like this."

"Trust me, there's a reason I'm doing this as I am, just watch and let it unfold." Things were being played right into his hand and Robin normally loved for his investigations to be this easy, but there was a feeling to what was happening that wasn't sitting right with him. He closed his eyes for a second, inhaling through his nose as he silently prayed that the clues he was picking up were wrong, then exhaling once he thought he'd prayed long enough. "Go ahead and say who's there, I promise we won't take drastic measures if you say anything that isn't right."

Hesitating as he mentally went over who was supposed to be at the house, not who actually was there, Frederick's first instinct was to come clean about what had happened, before he could be called out on it by misspeaking. "It was Maribelle's idea to prioritize coming here over fulfilling her duty as a babysitter," he confessed, watching Robin relax and Chrom turn to look at him in his confused state. "She figured it would be innocent, a few hours spent socializing before going home and pretending nothing had ever happened. She wasn't accounting for a snowstorm to prevent us from getting back home."

"This isn't saying who's there that shouldn't be," Chrom pointed out, not quite connecting dots that Robin already seemed to have. "This is just saying that someone is there, and no one bothered telling me anything about it."

"How long have you known about this, specifically?" Frederick asked, overlooking what Chrom had said because he knew he needed to be the one to admit to it. "I've done my best to make sure it wasn't mentioned directly, yet here we are, you knowing what it is Maribelle and I have been hiding from everyone."

"I hadn't known anything 'specifically' until right now, before this it had been merely suspicion that you two had done something you shouldn't have. A few other things did factor into my conclusion, but the damning evidence was your miscounting, I'll have you know." Robin nodded, satisfied with what had happened. "So do what's right and explain to me and Chrom what you've done."

"It wasn't anything I did, it was Maribelle's choosing to do it, I already explained that part, if you weren't paying attention." Clasping his hands in front of his face, Frederick caught Robin's disgusted glare at him and swallowed down because of it, knowing that the moment of mercy might have been past him. "It only happened because Maribelle really did want to come to the station party, she wouldn't have shirked off babysitting otherwise, but they never came to pick their daughter up. She felt like she had no choice."

"Daughter…?" Chrom repeated, those gears finally turning in his head, and when he came to the conclusion Robin had reached long before him he slammed a hand down on his leg and shouted, "Gods damn it, are you telling me that Kjelle's at my house and not with her parents? What happened to them?"

"What happened is that they never came to pick her up after driving Panne home. At least, that's what I assume they were doing, that's what we were told they were doing and I have no reason to believe otherwise." It felt almost like he was trying to defend people who weren't present from any unjust accusations, but Frederick knew that he shouldn't have been spending his time doing that. "And Maribelle, she didn't want to bring Kjelle with us here, so she tasked Lissa with watching her for just a few hours, which turned into an overnight and has had some sort of negative consequences."

He watched the other two shift uncomfortably at that revelation, but he was quick to clarify what he was certain they were jumping to assume. "She isn't harmed badly, but she's harmed enough to make it impossible to hide that something happened. Maribelle's reacting the way she is to this because Kjelle has ultimately been her responsibility, and she knows she will be in a lot of trouble once everyone's safely home."

"This would explain why Stahl mentioned stopping by that house in specific while he was out, by the way," Robin said, looking at Chrom as he spoke. "That was when things started coming together for me, and then Frederick's slip-up sealed the nail in that coffin. What a shame that this is how everything had to happen, parents and young child separated for a holiday, parents unaccounted for, child injured somewhere she shouldn't have been…what was it that you said earlier? It's Christmas, why can't things go right for this one day?"

"Stahl mentioned contacting them, so they're not unaccounted for so much as they're just not home, thankfully." That was one small positive Chrom had found in what Robin was saying, but its positivity wasn't enough to mask all of the negative things they were facing. "However, he also mentioned that the call he had got disconnected and he hadn't been able to contact anyone after that. That means that if someone has, in fact, happened to Kjelle, they're unaware of it."

Robin nodded along, taking in every word Chrom was saying and adding it to his own mental chain of events. "Let me get this straight, they didn't give permission for someone else to watch their child, they asked Maribelle to do it. Maribelle, who pawned her off to come be a socialite, who disregarded the history of everyone involved to get her way, who now has the hypothetical blood of a child on her hands? Does that sound right?"

"It does, yes," Frederick said in a muffled response, his hands pressed against his mouth as he'd started to turn pale at the way everything had unfolded. "I…need to speak to Maribelle about all of this, please excuse me."

His departure wasn't stopped by either of the other men, although they both got up to leave the office as well. "I'll go talk to our wives, see if they can contact anyone," Robin suggested, hoping his attempt to help solve the mystery of what was going on hadn't shaken Chrom too much. "Maybe one of them will be able to get through to Lissa to see what's happening, they'd be more reliable than Maribelle, at this rate."

"No, follow Frederick. You unearthed their secret, you can continue investigating it at the source. Leave no stones unturned, you're dealing with multiple families at this point." Once they were in the hallway, Chrom pointed towards Frederick's office, his stern finger enough to get Robin to sigh and follow it. He waited until he saw his investigator disappear from his line of sight before he turned back into the office, firmly locking the door behind him once he was inside.

There was something he felt he needed to do right then, as the police chief and as a friend.


For some reason, it seemed like Stahl got pulled into situations at the exact moment everyone else involved had no other ways to handle anything. The previous summer, he'd been expected to drive through a raging snowstorm to rescue people in a different country, and that had been the eye-opening experience to how many times things like that happened to him. Someone about to fall off a cliff and needs someone to help them, despite having had plenty of time to save themselves beforehand? Better call Stahl, he'll know exactly what to do at the risk of his own life.

What had happened that day, though, was a little different than that, as he'd already been out trying to make a difference when he'd been called to come rescue people that he knew pretty well. The moment that phone call dropped, he knew that there was no chance he was going to get to finish it, but it allowed for him to answer the call he was receiving right then, which might have gotten ugly had he waited a minute longer to respond. Actually, it had already been ugly when he did respond, so it could've gotten uglier and to the typical point of when it was he was included.

The icing on that cake, though, had been who it was calling him begging for help. He wasn't a petty or spiteful guy in the slightest, but hearing Gaius' voice through Cordelia's phone asking him where he was and if he could come pull him out of a tight spot was not anything he was interested in pursuing. It wasn't until Cordelia was mentioned, and it was explained that she was the one who needed help, not him, that he decided he needed to find them and take them back to the station, because they clearly were not where they'd agreed to meet back up.

When he'd shown up at the convenience store, open for some reason despite the weather and the holiday, he was greeted by a grim-faced employee who led him straight to the back office of the store. He hadn't even introduced himself or explained why he was there before this happened, but as he was being walked back there he realized that this man knew he was coming simply because no one else in their right mind would've been out at that moment, in those conditions. That was where he saw Cordelia almost lifeless, staring out into nothing with eyes that were glazed over, her hands gripped tightly in Gaius' but in the most non-romantic way possible. "We need to get her help, now," he said, bringing himself to his feet as the employee and Stahl both fully came into the room. "She's not going to last much longer like this, she got too cold out there."

"What happened to put you two here and not at Lon'qu's house like we agreed on?" Stahl asked, understanding the urgency but not understanding why it was how it was. "Are you going to explain that to me?"

"I'll do it once we're at the hospital, I'm sure Cordelia's life matters more than you getting a story out of me does." He was right, he could tell the story a million times over but in the end all Stahl cared about was making sure Cordelia was going to be okay, and so together (with the help of the store employee) they carefully picked her up and carried her out to the backseat of Stahl's car, laying her on the seat and haphazardly buckling her in for legality's sake, before taking the front seats for themselves and driving away, after Gaius thanked the employee many times over for letting them in and helping them as he did.

The ride was long and slow and reminded Stahl of the one he'd made the previous summer, but instead of driving down winding mountain roads that were covered in snow, he was driving through city streets he was super familiar with. "You know that if Chrom were to see this, he would be angry that she's laying down back there," he remarked, looking in his rearview mirror to see Cordelia's almost lifeless body. "Not because it's illegal, but because she's usually the last one to lay down on the job."

"This isn't the time for that kind of stuff," Gaius snapped, his voice tired and angry. "I've had to watch her slowly dying since we got kicked out of the other car, she's not going to make it with how slow you're going!"

"You want me to…break the laws we're trained to uphold, so that we can save a friend?" It was an absurd notion to Stahl, but looking back at Cordelia again he could understand why Gaius felt so strongly about it. "If the roads weren't so bad, I'd consider it, but I'm barely hanging onto the wheel as it is, I can't imagine going faster. As much as it sucks, we're going to have to stick to this slow and steady pace, and hope that everything ends up being fine."

For the rest of the ride, Gaius continued griping about how slow they were going, reaching into the back seat at times to make sure Cordelia still had a pulse and they weren't toting around a dead body. Once they were at the hospital they rushed her inside, the nurses having already been notified that they were on their way thanks to the men having between them the number to call in an emergency despite not being in an emergency vehicle of any kind. It was one of those perks of being a police officer that Stahl never thought he'd see have any use, and he hated that they had to use it that day, for someone as near and dear to his heart as Cordelia was.

It was after she was rushed into a room and Gaius was taken back with her, to make sure he wasn't suffering from anything caused by the cold that Stahl decided to call Chrom and let him know what was going on, giving him as much information as he could despite having limited information to work with. He didn't resent who was responsible for this, and for once he wasn't upset that she'd been saddled with spending time with Gaius, because if it hadn't been for him she might have actually died, and he tried to make all of that clear as he spoke with the man who'd sent them all out as he had. "I don't think Cordelia would want you to blame yourself for this," he said, sureness in his voice. "She would blame herself for it, somehow, and we'd all tell her it's okay. That's what I know. That's what we're going to believe right now, until she's fine."

The response he got from Chrom for that didn't matter, because it wasn't in agreement with what he'd just said and he wasn't going to let a dose of reality ruin his hopefulness. When that call ended, he spent a lot of time sitting by himself there at the hospital, wondering how things were going and if there was anything he could have done differently to prevent this from happening. Maybe if he hadn't been so oblivious for so long about what Cordelia wanted, or maybe if he hadn't gotten so jealous whenever Gaius was around, maybe then this could have never happened and she wouldn't have been admitted to the hospital on Christmas for being stuck out in the cold.

At some point Gaius came out from where they were holding him, looking exactly as he had when he was taken back. "They said it's a miracle I'm not a person-sicle like she was, with how cold and underdressed we were out there," he told Stahl as he took the seat next to him, slapping him on the leg as he sat. "I told them that the only miracle I want to hear is that she's perfectly fine, that shut them right up."

"You got discharged already?" Stahl asked in surprise, expecting that things would've taken much longer since this was the busiest hospital in Ylisstol most days. "They must have nothing else going on today, how lucky."

"More like, there wasn't anything wrong with me except my body temp being a bit cold. Threw me under a blanket for half an hour and I was good to go. Except I'm not going anywhere, we've got a Cordelia to wait for." Slapping Stahl's leg again, Gaius looked at him face-to-face, before he sighed. "Look, man, I'm sorry this happened to her. It's my fault, I wouldn't shut my mouth and it drove Lon'qu to the point of kicking us out. If she dies, I'm sure it'd only be right if I got punished for it."

Stahl squirmed at the idea of Cordelia not surviving this, but he wasn't going to let Gaius know how uncomfortable that idea made him. "She won't die and you won't be punished. You weren't the one who actively abandoned her in the snow, that was Lon'qu. He'll…I don't know, he'll get punished no matter how she turns out, but I don't know how Chrom's going to find it in himself to be impartial to his brother-in-law."

"That's why he's not going to punish him, he's going to punish me for it. Guy's always giving me a million second chances, now that I'm responsible for one of his officers being hurt or maybe killed he's going to stop doing that." Gaius started fidgeting, bringing his hand off Stahl's leg and instead tapping it on the armrest of the chair in between them. "It sucks that that's how it's going to be, but can't say I don't deserve it."

"You don't deserve to be punished for something you didn't do. You're not the one who decided to take a walk in the snow with Cordelia when she wasn't prepared for it, you had that forced upon you." He wasn't sure how many times he'd be able to repeat that fact, especially since it could be argued that he wasn't present for what had happened, he didn't know what had gone on, but Stahl had faith that he wasn't misunderstanding the situation and was defending the person who deserved it. That was an odd thought, that Gaius deserved defense for something, and he hoped this was going to be the only time that was the case.

They fell into silence for a while, the only sounds around them being the typical noises found within a hospital, but every so often, when they'd hear footsteps coming up towards them they'd both turn simultaneously to look for the source, hoping it was Cordelia coming to let them know she was okay. It never was, nor was it ever someone coming to tell them how she was doing. It was just everyday nurses and staff, walking by and going about their business, exactly as they should have been.

"Do you think anyone here recognizes us as officers?" Stahl asked in an attempt to fill the void their lack of conversation was causing. "I'm sure we've had to come here enough with criminals that someone's got to know who we are."

"Nah man, we're not that big of deals. Chrom, Robin, maybe even Frederick? They'd be recognized in a heartbeat, they've got famous faces and high-profile positions. Us? We're just the bottom of the officer barrel, nothing special about us." What Gaius was saying was striking a nerve inside of Stahl, pointing out a fact he'd already known about himself for a long time but had tried to push past for the sake of his sanity: he wasn't anything or anyone special, and the people around him were simply better than him.

He wasn't going to make it obvious that he felt that way, not to Gaius of all people, so he swallowed down all negative thoughts to say, "Yeah, makes sense. Wouldn't it be funny if one of them came in with us, then maybe we'd get special treatment while we wait around for Cordelia."

Almost like magic, his phone (which he was supposed to have silenced upon entering the hospital) started ringing, catching him by surprise. When he saw that it was Chrom calling him, he was quickly growing confused and concerned, about to start considering whether or not Gaius had just predicted the future by mentioning him moments before. "Take your call, I'll be right here when you get done," Gaius said with a smile, looking at Stahl's phone screen to see it was Chrom's number showing up. "Oh shit, you've got the chief calling you, that's definitely something you've got to take."

"I know, I know." Stahl was getting up so he could step out somewhere he wouldn't be disturbing anyone as he talked, and the moment he was walking away from Gaius he answered the call. "Hello? We don't know anything more about Cordelia yet, Gaius is fine though, he's out in the waiting area with me."

"That's good, but that's not why I've called you," Chrom replied, not even giving a greeting because Stahl had gone right into conversation. "I need you to swing by my house for me, there seems to have been an incident there and you are the only person I can trust to check up on it safely and effectively. Are you able to do that for me?"

"I mean, I am able to, but Cordelia…" Just the thought of abandoning his post there in the waiting room for longer than it took to take a call was making Stahl want to reject the request, but this was Chrom he was dealing with. Chrom, who had a number of children at his house at the moment that might have needed his help, who was unable to do anything for himself and needed his most flexible and reliable officer to do the job for him. "I can do it, do you know what kind of incident it's been?"

There was a pause on the other side of the line, before Chrom answered him. "I don't know, unfortunately, but I do know who it involves and I do know that you may need to transport children if you take this up. Small children."

"Your nephew?" Stahl asked, hesitant to suggest it but not knowing what else he could say. "I'm not sure I could do that, knowing that his dad's kind of the reason that Cordelia's in here right now. Can you ask him to do it?"

"It's not necessarily an issue about O'wain, that's why I'm tasking you with it. Remember earlier when you mentioned that our friends aren't home? Their daughter's at my house, for some reason I have yet to fully understand, and we have reason to believe that something happened with her." Hearing that made the feeling Stahl had experienced sitting in front of that darkened house not all that long beforehand cross his mind, the confusion turning to pain on behalf of the most-likely-unaware parents.

He didn't want to abandon Cordelia (and by extension Gaius), but at the same time this was directly related to two of his closest friends and he couldn't let them suffer in the dark. "I'll head right over, I don't have a carseat though so if I do need to bring her here I don't think I can do it."

"Don't worry about that, Lissa will be able to help you there in some way, I'm sure of it. You're taking this heavy weight off my shoulders, I was beginning to consider driving over there myself in my ill-prepared car, but if you're going to do this I know it'll be done right." It must have been really important if Chrom was ready to throw caution to the wind and go check on things, and it was at that point that Stahl realized he wasn't going to be able to back out of things at any cost. Which was fine, he was just invested enough to not want to back out anyway, but still. "Let me know once you're there, I have yet to speak to Lissa on the matter and would like to get the chance."

"Wait a second, if you haven't talked to your sister, how do you know this is happening? Are you sure you're not just trying to pull me away from making sure Cordelia's okay?" That was a giant red flag that he needed to get addressed before he went anywhere, not wanting to risk his life to check on lives that didn't need it, especially when a life that mattered to him was on the line.

The chuckle on Chrom's end of the call was breathy, almost as if he was forcing himself to laugh at Stahl's slip back into confusion. "I haven't spoken to her since before everything happened, but Maribelle has, and while she isn't a trustworthy source when she gets worked up, she typically has a reason for it. Do this for me, Cordelia will be waiting for you when you get back to her."

That was assurance enough to get him motivated, and after promising he would be right on it Stahl walked back over to where Gaius was still seated, watching his approach. "So what's the chief wanting from you? Making sure you haven't found your way into Cordelia's bed or something, huh?"

"No, he needs me to go check on a different situation he's heard about. You won't mind being left alone for a little bit, will you?" There was no other choice, really, but Stahl wanted to make it look like there was even a slight chance that Gaius could have come with him. When he shook his head in response, that was enough of an answer that it could be accepted and ran with. "Hey, thanks for understanding. If you happen to see her before I get back, let her know that…that I didn't want to leave her here with you, I wanted to be here waiting as well. She'll appreciate it, I think."

He was walking towards the doors to the parking garage when he heard Gaius finally process what he'd been asked to pass along, the loud "wait a second!" resonating through the rather empty hospital a lot louder than he was sure he'd intended. That wasn't his issue, even though he was sure that if something happened while he was gone the message wouldn't be shared as intended, but Stahl had no intentions of being gone so long that Cordelia would wake up and be receiving guests without him there. He was just going to go check on the situation at Chrom's house and come back by his lonesome, take that seat next to Gaius once more, and wait everything out.

That was what he'd convinced himself he was going to do for the duration of the ride over to the house across town, taking every stop and turn carefully to not endanger himself, thankful he was alone but wishing he hadn't had to leave where he was. But when he got out of the car and headed for the front door of the house, he could already hear what sounded like multiple children inside crying for some reason, which was never a good sign. He found the front door to be unlocked, but he didn't open it in case someone inside would think he was an intruder and attack him; his decision right then was to call Chrom as asked and have him give verbal permission to enter his home without waiting for someone to properly let him in.

Just to be safe, he kept Chrom on the line as he entered, the sound of crying getting louder the moment the door was opened. "Oh gods, what are you doing here?" Lissa frantically asked, seeing Stahl walk in with a phone pressed against his face as she slowly took a step down the staircase, her arms dripping in blood as she carried her son down. "Who sent you? I-I can handle this all on my own, I hope you know!"

"I'm here to check on a situation," he replied, with Chrom in his ear telling him to hand her the phone so that he could hear everything for himself. "I can't do that, boss, she's got a kid in her arms and she's all bloodied, it'd just dirty up my phone."

"Boss? You've got Chrom on the phone with you?" If she hadn't already been pale as a ghost from what had happened, hearing that her brother was listening in on what was happening would have drained any remaining color from her face. "Someone told him, he knows, oh no now I'm going to be so dead once everything's okay…"

"Whoa, whoa, don't talk like that!" Despite hearing Chrom say that she wasn't far off from the truth, Stahl wasn't going to take everyone's negative perception of the situation as his own, and he hung up on Chrom to have two available hands for helping. "Look here, I'm just here to help you with whatever's happening, I'm not going to judge or cause any problems, I promise. We're friends, aren't we?"

Lissa was repeating what she'd previously said about being dead over everything, so talking directly to her wasn't going to work out. He spotted a pair of blue-haired heads poking their way out of the side room and waved for them to come towards him, knowing that those were Chrom's kids and that they would know what was happening. One of them approached him, the other hanging back, and once the younger boy was in front of him he posed the question of what had happened to him. "A cabinet upstairs got broken somehow and people got cut on the glass, I guess," Inigo explained, having not seen the incident for himself but having walked in on the aftermath. "Lucy's in the other room with a box of bandages, but it's hard when there's still glass in the cuts."

"How would she know that if—" Stahl cut himself off when he looked at who was in Lissa's arms again, his mind flashing back to being told that it had nothing to do with that child but rather a different, more important to him one. "—right. Well, I'm here to help out however I can, and if she's got cuts that need medical attention I can take her to the doctor to get her checked out."

"You can't take her anywhere, she's my responsibility and the only people taking her out of this house are Maribelle or her parents!" Having reached the bottom of the stairs, Lissa was standing next to Stahl, trying to push a loudly whining O'wain towards him. "But you can take my baby, he fell into the glass and tore his hand up way worse than a few bandages will fix. He needs you to take him with you, I trust you can do it."

"I can take him too, sure, but I need to check on Kjelle as well." He watched as Lissa cringed at the name as he said it, almost as if she didn't want to be reminded of who else it was that had been hurt. "It won't be too bad if I have to take her with me, I'm real close with her parents and they'd trust me with her, I know they would."

Something he'd said struck a nerve within Lissa, and she pulled O'wain back closer to her chest, trying to snuggle him into silence. "They'd trust you because you're not someone they both dislike and can't stand," she reminded him, "and they wouldn't try to press charges or something stupid like that if it were your fault that she was hurt. But it's my fault, I wasn't even supposed to be watching their baby, and I let her get hurt because I'm that spiteful or a person or something!" Every word had brought her closer to tears until she was sobbing with the last mouthful of words, her tears falling right onto the top of her son's head. "I can't let her go with you, you'll just get me in trouble."

"You trust me with your own child but not someone else's?"

"It's not that I don't trust you with her, it's that I don't trust that you won't get me in trouble for having her here with me." Little did Lissa know that he'd already started that chain of information finding its way to the proper recipients, even if he hadn't said anything with specifics when he had. "I've been trained on how to handle medical situations, I can handle her nicks and cuts once I take a look at her. O'wain's arm is far too cut for me to do anything, I know this, and I need you to help with it."

"No, I really can't just take him and call it good! I have to do what I was told and make sure she's okay as well. I'm sorry Lissa, but that's just how it is." Stahl was loyal and insistent to a fault, always wanting to do what he thought was best even if it was just barely enough to be considered doing anything at all. Even as Lissa was begging for him to change his mind, he was ignoring her, choosing to follow Inigo into the other room so that he should see what the rest of the injuries that had been sustained were.

Sitting on the floor in that room were all the other children under Lissa's care, some of them coming down from crying fits and sniffling as they watched him enter, others bandaging up their toes and feet from what he assumed was the same broken cabinet. "Look Lucy, Father actually sent someone to help us!" Inigo announced as they walked in, Lucina smiling in thanks up at the man following her brother. "And you thought he was just here to help Aunt Lissa out, so how about that!"

"I was a bit scared that she'd called for help for O'wain and only O'wain," Lucina admitted, not moving from her spot but turning her attention to the carseat she was rocking gently with one hand. "I…don't know how well I handled this, but I got her legs to stop bleeding everywhere, but there's still glass in them, I know there is. That can't be good for a baby."

Stahl came in front of the seat and bent down to take a closer look at who was in it, getting down on his knees when he found that squatting was keeping him too far away. "She looks miserable, if you don't mind me saying that. I don't care what Lissa says or wants, I need to take her back to the hospital with me."

"The hospital?" Lucina's repetition was done as she pulled her hand back from rocking the seat, Kjelle opening her eyes almost immediately and starting to whimper once more. "No, she can't be that hurt, even if she's little none of the cuts were that bad, really."

"Oh, I think you misunderstand me, let me explain what's going on." This was a room full of children, none of whom really needed to know the ins-and-outs of daily police station life, but their fathers were the three most important men on staff, so it was possible they'd heard stories before, and this wasn't even much of a story. "One of our officers is in the hospital right now, she got really messed up from the snow, and I'm going back to be with her once I'm done here, so it's not that I'm taking Kjelle there because she really needs it, I'm taking her because it's just where I'll be so why not let them look at her?"

Lucina thought on what she'd heard for a moment, before nodding. "Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I got scared you thought she was super hurt or something like that."

"He's not taking her anywhere!" Lissa called out, breathless, as she entered the room. "I'm not letting her leave this house unless it's with Maribelle or one of her parents, I already told him that! She'll be fine, she's been patched up, he needs to take O'wain and get him taken care of, that's that!"

Closing his eyes as he tried to come up with some solution to the problem that he was being faced with, Stahl re-opened them when he heard a scream come from the baby he was in front of, looking straight at Kjelle and seeing the pain she was in shining in her eyes. "I can take both, but I'm not taking just your son," he said to Lissa, standing up and turning to face her. "You're going to have to understand that I was called over here to check on her and I'm going to do that job before I do any others."

"And I'm supposed to let you do that? Look, I didn't want to watch her, I've wanted nothing to do with her since she got here yesterday, but I can't let someone who wasn't trusted with her care take her out in the snow!" Once again Lissa was trying to push O'wain towards him, trying to get him to take her son over the baby. "You need to take care of who I say you can take care of!"'

"I'm sorry, Lissa, but I…I don't think you were actually 'trusted' with her care." Talking back to her wasn't anything Stahl had wanted to do, but it was necessary to get her to shut up and actually listen to what it was he was saying. "Hear me out on this, if you let me take her with me I'll cover for you, I'll talk to everyone back at the station and the fact that she was here with you will stay secret. We'll pretend Maribelle found a different babysitter for her, we'll make sure your name never comes up, we'll keep you safe and away from any blame. This injury, we'll say the cold broke a window or something, I'm sure that can happen."

When she spoke again, Lissa's voice was softer in volume, making it harder for her to be heard over the crying happening in her arms. "And what if they don't keep it secret? I'd rather not be hated for something I didn't mean to have happen under my care."

"I'll make sure they don't hate you for it if they find out somehow, no one has any right to blame you for anything happening. Now will you please let me take care of this?" She was reluctant to let Stahl have his way but she ultimately conceded, although the concession was quickly followed with the realization that they didn't have the other part of the carseat needed to make it vehicle-ready, nor did they have one for O'wain to ride in (since his was in his father's vehicle and therefore not at the house).

It wasn't something that he ever liked having to do, but Stahl recognized that sometimes, laws could be bent if it meant doing the right thing in the end, and it was going to be another secret that was taken to the grave. All of it was, really, since he couldn't drive over to the hospital with two children unrestrained on his own, which meant that Lissa had to come with him—leaving the other six children there alone. He intended on bringing everyone back as soon as possible, and that was how they were able to convince the eldest children that it was fine to be alone for a bit, but once they'd trekked across town and gotten the kids admitted, he came to understand that there wasn't going to be a "soon as possible" in this situation, and he needed to make a decision about what to do with the rest of the children.

Taking them to the station to rejoin their parents, once again not in the most legal of manners, wasn't the optimal plan, but it was the only choice he had. It allowed for them to be somewhere with supervision while also giving him the chance to catch Chrom up to speed on everything that had happened face-to-face, as opposed to doing it over the phone. "So you promised my sister we would keep this all secret, but do you realize how bad of an idea that is?" he asked, once Stahl had given him the full story and he was able to reflect on it. "The moment someone catches on to the fact that we're lying…"

"It was the only way I could get her to let me do anything, I know it's a bad idea but it needed to be done. You didn't hear the crying, Chrom. Those kids were suffering and they needed me to step in and help them." Already he was backing out of the conversation, this secondary problem all solved, which meant that he could go back to the first thing that he'd been pulled into. "If you don't want to do it, that's fine and I respect that, but I don't want your sister getting in trouble for doing what she thought was right."

"Stahl, where do you think you're going so soon? You just got back, aren't you going to check in with everyone?" Chrom was watching him shuffle backwards, heading right back to the door he'd entered the station from. "I'm sure there are several parents here who would love to tell you that you've partially saved their Christmas by bringing their children here for them, after all hope was lost."

"You know, I'd love to check in with everyone, but there's someone else I need to check in on first. Who knows, maybe Cordelia will be awake once I'm back!" There was cheer in his voice as he made the statement, that being the one thing he was currently hoping for. "I'll let you know how she's doing when I see her, and maybe I'll get your sister to let you know how she's doing if I run into her while I'm there."

Chrom let him get most of the way towards the door before asking one final question, one that stopped Stahl where he stood: "And what about Kjelle, hm? You aren't going to continue leaving her in Lissa's care now that you've gotten involved, are you?"

"No, I think I'm going to do what's best for everyone and keep her under my care until I reunite her with her parents. I'm sure they'd appreciate knowing that I ended up with her more than anyone else," he replied, after giving it some deep thought. "Which reminds me, I've got to go check on her too! There's so much to do, and I can't do any of it sticking around here!"

He was out of the station immediately after that, leaving Chrom shaking his head in his wake. "Well, if there's one thing I can always count on Stahl for, it's getting things done, no matter the circumstances…"


The fractured half of the conversation she'd had haunted Sully for the whole day, her mind unable to push past it as doing so would mean she'd accepted that her daughter was somewhere unknown and she wasn't going to do that, no matter what. "We need to go back, right now," she said hours later, interrupting whatever the family they were with was doing to jump to her feet and start for the door. "We can handle the roads, if Stahl's driving around Ylisstol, that means we can drive back."

"No, it really doesn't," Panne countered, also getting to her feet so that she could follow her to the door, which was opened to reveal that the wind was still kicking up snow outside. "You two will get lost or die out in this storm, even if it's dying down it's still something you do not want to mess with. Rejoin us, wherever she is she's being cared for and you'll be thankful for it when you get home tomorrow."

"I can't wait until tomorrow, there's no way we can figure out where she is right now! Why the hell would I be content with sitting around believing in the fake story that she's being cared for? She was abandoned for the sake of a party!" There was genuine anger in Sully's voice, but looking outside at the blowing snow told her that there was truth to Panne's words and that she needed to stay where she was for the moment.

"We'll leave as soon as possible, I'm promisin' ya that," Vaike told her once she rejoined everyone, although she didn't take her seat once more and instead stood behind him, forcing him to tilt his head back to look up at her. "I don't like knowin' that we don't know where she is, but we've gotta believe that we trust the right people, yeah?"

From his perspective, he could see all the emotions cross his wife's face as she worked through them, from scrunching up her nose and squinting her eyes to slowly relaxing until she shrugged. "I…don't think we trusted the right people, which is awfully hilarious because everyone else can trust them and not a damn thing happens! We trust them and this happens! Just our luck, huh?"

"To be fair, anythin' happenin' would've been a bad time with all this. Not like any 'a them would've driven out here like we had, and not like any 'a them think t'be nice t'anyone else other than themselves and their close friends." Pausing as he thought about what he'd just said meant, Vaike added, "Which, uh, looks like we don't exactly fit that with the people y'decided t'trust this time, which makes sense 'cause—"

"Do us all a favor and don't say it." She had been mentally bracing herself for where he was going with his point, but at the last moment Sully had decided she didn't want to hear it after all. She didn't want to hear the dragging of someone she'd thought had her back after all the things they'd been through together with each other, and she didn't want to hear the justification of why that was. There were a lot of people who could've been blamed in that moment, but she wasn't going to push all that blame onto someone else until she knew the full story, the whole situation; right now she knew that Maribelle had betrayed her and chosen herself over her duty, but there was no proof that she'd done anything spiteful or stupid in her betrayal.

"When morning comes, we'll get you two on your way without issue," Panne said, interrupting the train of thought and the conversation as a whole. "Just focus on that, you have a set time you will be leaving and returning home to fix everything being gone has broken. Isn't that what you want?"

It was what they both wanted, but only one of them was going to agree with it outright. The other, looking at the family that had graciously taken them in, gave a shake of his head. "I'unno, bein' here with all of ya hasn't been the worst, it's been kinda nice t'not haveta worry 'bout work or any 'a the other people back home. The power bein' out's been a bummer, but lemme tell ya, if we had Kjelle here with us this woulda been the best way t'spend the holidays."

"I'm flattered to hear you say that, and know that if you want to ever come back out here for a holiday season we would gladly open our doors for you." The three older kids all echoed their mother's words, all in agreement that having guests to spend the time with was something they enjoyed, but there were a couple of dissenters to the positive message. When Panne saw that her husband looked unhappy with the offer, she tilted her head towards him, asking, "What, do you take issue with what I've said? They've done so much for me while I've been working in their place that it's only fair we open our doors to them again."

If he was going to try to come up with a rebuttal, he wasn't finding much success in it, as every time Donny opened his mouth to say something he'd close it immediately, only for the cycle to repeat itself. After a few times of him doing this, Panne couldn't help but give a chuckle at his behavior and he learned then that he had lost the battle, anything he could possibly say being irrelevant because he'd made her laugh.

"I think I know what he might've been going for," Sully said as she looked at Donny and tried to get a read on his facial expression, something that was difficult as he was starting to crack up as well. "This time of year should be a 'family at home' thing, not a 'let's have friend time somewhere' thing, and it's not like there's a lot of room for all of us in this damn house, anyway. If we're going to do the friend holiday, we're doing it somewhere bigger."

"That's a fair point to make, we're rather crowded in here right now and adding Kjelle would only make it worse. However," Panne raised a finger as she presented her new point, "I would assume that the only reason we've managed to stay comfortably warm in here without power every time it goes out has been due to how many bodies we have in the house. Adding more people means making it warmer, and I would never complain about the house being too warm in a winter storm." She might have been laughing before that, but now she had everyone else starting to laugh as well, thinking about how silly of an idea that was.

It wasn't enough to make people forget about the negative things they'd heard about, but it was something to help them temporarily move past it. The day dragged on with several more flare-ups of the strong desire to get home and set things straight, but after the sun had set and the house had darkened to the point that candlelight was the only effective way to see, there was nothing left to distract from the reality of what might have been waiting for them back in Ylisstol. Even as the adults held a long conversation after the children had gone off to bed, they kept slipping back to discussing what could have happened in the not-even two days that they'd been gone, although it wasn't just in regards to Kjelle, as they knew the storm had hit town hard and people were most likely stranded in difficult places.

Even still, the conversation mostly tracked back to where in the world the baby could have ended up if she wasn't still under Maribelle's watch, to the point that after some time, there was nothing they could talk about aside from that. "It's clear that you want to get out of here as soon as possible," Panne said with a knowing smile, made ominous in the candlelight, "so perhaps we could all head off for the night now? That way, when morning comes we can get you on your way with little delay."

"That sounds perfect, honestly." Already in her head Sully was plotting out exactly how she was going to approach Maribelle once they were back in town, demanding answers and not resting until she'd gotten a full explanation and apology for what she'd done. "Let's just get some sleep before we can finally leave and get out of this place."

"You sound as if you haven't enjoyed your time here." Her flat delivery of the line showed that Panne was joking as she said it, knowing that the extended visit hadn't been something intentional. "Was it something we did wrong? Our children were on their best behavior the entire time, should we punish them for ruining your experience here on the farm?"

"C'mon now, y'know she just wants t'get back home," Vaike replied, not catching that Panne was cracking a joke. "It's nothin' personal about any of ya, don't worry." His obliviousness earned a round of laughter, something that was a perfect send-off for the evening, and after they'd turned into their room Vaike voiced his confusion about why he'd gotten laughter in response to what he'd said.

Rather than reply to his question, Sully was thinking about getting home and setting everything straight that she could, but she looked at him and smiled. "I think they were just playing around with you," she said, laying down in the small bed she'd slept in the night before and sighing. "This visit out here would've been so much better if it hadn't happened like this, you know. I bet we would've enjoyed ourselves if we hadn't been trapped."

"I don't know what you're talkin' about, I enjoyed myself a whole lot. Me and Donny had all sorts 'a conversations 'bout things I wouldn't've expected from the guy. And those kids? Man, I'd be down for watchin' them sometime if we needed to." Settling down in his bed as well, Vaike yawned as he got under the blankets. "They're good kids, Sully. I like 'em."

"That's great, glad you like them. We'll make sure to visit them again sometime, with Kjelle with us so that none of this happens again!" She grumbled some additional things under her breath for a few minutes, her voice never raising to loud enough to be heard in the other bed. After she'd quieted down, the sounds of the stillness of night filling the room, he'd started to assume she'd fallen asleep, but then he heard her ask as softly as she possibly could, given her typically strong voice: "Hey, what time do you think it is right now?"

He blinked a couple of times to make sure he was processing her question right, but due to there being no power and no reliable way to check the time where they were he wasn't sure how to answer. "Er, probably after midnight at this point, which means we really should get t'sleepin' before it's too much later. Early in the mornin', isn't that what Panne said?"

"After midnight, huh? Guess that means it's not Christmas anymore." It was all she responded with, and he wasn't sure how he was supposed to reply other than agreeing with her and focusing on trying to sleep. However, that plan was thwarted when she spoke once more. "You…do remember what today is, don't you?"

He honestly couldn't say that he did, with everything that had happened in the past two days. It felt like it might've been important, but as far as he was concerned, getting home and back to real life was what mattered most; when he never responded to her follow-up comment she accepted that he wasn't going to play along and tried winding her mind down just enough to fall asleep herself.

As they were preparing themselves for the second night on the farm, everyone trapped in the station in Ylisstol was still wide awake, readying themselves for a long night of getting everyone out of there as safely as possible. Over the course of the day, the roads had cleared up just enough that some people deemed them passable for driving, while others were still hesitant to venture out on their own. The solution to that came in the form of Stahl, who had spent most of the day driving back and forth between the station and the hospital anyway to relay messages and transport people as needed.

It had been on one of the last trips back from the hospital that he'd thought to offer up the idea of taking anyone who didn't feel like driving home for them, and when he'd pulled into the station's parking lot to see several officers cleaning cars off he was surprised to see they'd had the idea to go home as well. "You know the roads aren't that bad now, right?" he asked upon getting out of his car, Gaius exiting from the passenger side at the same time. "Like, there are actual people out again! It's weird seeing other headlights out on the streets tonight, after how bad it was this morning."

"We were made aware of it when Gregor left for a few minutes to retrieve his, ahem, wrecked vehicle," Miriel replied, crossing her arms in front of her and attempting not to make her teeth chattering too obvious of a sound. "That was why I was asked to come out, to inspect the damage from that, when—"

"We're gonna try getting everyone home!" Nowi cried out, cutting her off. "Ricken and I are going to get every car free of snow so that everyone gets to spend tonight at home!"

"—when the two of them followed me out to do their own thing." Sighing as she disliked being cut off, Miriel glared at Nowi over her glasses before looking back to the two men who'd just joined them. "At any rate, it is good to see you have rejoined us. Shall we go inside to let everyone know your news of there being others out and about?"

"I'll go in and do it." Stahl took a couple steps towards the door, before stopping and looking back at Miriel, who was staring at him, body shivering. "Oh, you know what, you can come too! There's a lot of people to tell and the more of us talking, the better, right?"

She nodded, coming closer to him before walking briskly past him. "You are completely correct on that. Hurry now, we don't want to keep everyone up and out too late into the night, the roads could possibly ice over and cause more of a nightmare than this has been up to this point."

The two of them rushed inside, Gaius a couple steps behind them (and Nowi and Ricken a few steps behind him, not wanting to stay out in the cold if it was just the two of them out there). Chrom was waiting near the door, surprised to see the two from the hospital coming inside together. "I was expecting Stahl, not both of you," he remarked, holding a hand out to greet Gaius with. "Figured one of you would be keeping watch overnight to make sure she was okay. What happened?"

"She's going to stay all night and probably for another day or two, depending on how much of her hands they can save," Gaius answered, while Stahl and Miriel set off to inform everyone else at the station of the new plan. "You should've seen them for yourself, her fingers were starting to darken, it was honestly horrifying. I've seen some things before but that wasn't anything I could've imagined." Chrom seemed interested in what he was hearing, but he repeated the part where he hadn't expected to see both men come inside, allowing Gaius to come up with an answer for why that had happened. "Yeah, they wouldn't let us stay overnight with her because neither of us are on her papers, you know? They didn't want her getting angry that they'd let us stay."

"A very Cordelia thing to do, I must admit. We'll have to swing by in the morning to check on her, this whole situation's been a disaster and I wish I could get some explanation for how it happened." There was a chance for Gaius to throw the culprit under the bus for what he'd done, but Chrom silenced it with a zipped-lip motion. "No, none of that, I'm aware it was Lon'qu abandoning the two of you that caused it, but as long as he refuses to answer our calls there's not much that can be done."

"But something is gonna get done when it can?" Gaius asked, crossing his fingers in hopes that he'd get a positive answer and that the reason behind the suffering of someone dear to him would face justice for their actions. Chrom shrugged, however, dashing those hopes as quickly as he'd raised them. "Come on, really? He abandoned us in the freezing cold! She could've died because of him!"

Nodding in understanding, Chrom's words contrasted with his clear acceptance that something needed to be done. "I'm sure Lon'qu had a reason for what he did, even if what he did was wrong. I will have to speak to him about it before I decide anything, but I have a feeling that I won't be the first to speak to him about anything, if at all."

"You'll let your sister talk to him first?"

"They're married, unfortunately there's nothing I can do to stop her from discussing it with him. Of course, that happening requires him actually answering her calls, which he hasn't, but we'll see." There was a moment where Chrom was looking wistfully past Gaius, something that he felt was odd, but then he shook his head and resumed partaking in the current conversation. "Anyway, judging by how Miriel came in with you and Stahl, I'm assuming there's something that's being planned. Want to clue me in?"

Before Gaius had the chance to explain, Nowi called out from just inside the doorway that they were still going to try to get everyone home, with Ricken sighing at how she'd interrupted someone else trying to talk about it again. Chrom seemed to accept them as a source, though, and moved on to asking the two of them about what they'd seen while they were outside, which allowed for Gaius to properly come into the station. He looked at the nearest clock, seeing the hands just past midnight, and he groaned, putting his hands to his face and sliding them down. He was technically supposed to be on shift right then, he couldn't help more with the quest to get everyone home, and if anything happened to them while they were out it was his responsibility.

In the time it took for him to mentally prepare himself for doing the job of protecting the city overnight, everyone had been rounded up and informed of the plan, and there were just as many people hesitant to leave as there were ones ready to brave the roads. The kids were all half-awake at best, parents' arms holding or wrapped around their little ones, while chatter was erupting through the adults about how there was a lot of danger in what they were going to do, but as long as they played it safe everyone would be okay.

As Gaius stood by watching, his ear out for any emergency calls in the sleepy town, the group dwindled down, first everyone who was driving themselves going out and getting in their cars, then the people who wanted someone capable of driving to take them home. After the first round of people had been taken home, Stahl came into the station not just to get the next group, but to talk to Gaius. "I'm glad we got to know each other a bit better through all of what happened," he said, sounding sincere with every word. "It sucked, and Cordelia got hurt because of it, but we had each other there to get us through it."

"We sure did," he replied, smiling at him. "And now you're being the big-shot cool guy and I'm stuck watching the station on waiting room-chair sleep. What a turn of events."

"I'd say the biggest turn of events is that I'm gonna be stuck babysitting overnight for the first time in my life, but…keeping things secret, you know?" Stahl laughed, scratching at the base of his neck. "Anyway, I'll come check by one last time before I get everyone home, don't do anything bad while I'm gone."

He shot Stahl a couple half-hearted finger guns. "You got it, don't do anything dumb while you're out driving." That earned another laugh and he left, leaving Gaius to observing the station as it continued emptying out. The people that were still there, they were talking about what they could do to pass the time, or what had gone wrong over the past two days, or simply about what they'd do once they were home. He didn't have any answers for them, but he would've loved for any of them to acknowledge that he was there, that he had been a big part of some of what had happened, that he wasn't going home even though the rest of them were.

It was a lot of suffering, being the last officer left at the station. But at least he wasn't the one who'd abandoned people in the snow, or the one who'd been hurt by being abandoned. He wasn't the one who'd flaked on babysitting, or the one who'd allowed their new charge to be injured. He didn't have a glass mess or a social mess to clean up once morning came. He'd just stuck to his guns, kept being himself, and come out of it for the better. Sometimes that was just how life worked out, and he figured he'd have to tell Stahl about that realization at some point after everything was finally over. Everything. Not just getting people from the station home.


Morning's light brought with it the revelation that the blizzard had finally wound down, the bright blue sky overhead illuminating the high-piled snow drifts. Power was still out inside the house, which was easily ignored thanks to how strong the sunshine was outdoors; once everyone was awake two adults and one child went outside to dig the working vehicle out of the snow, while everyone else stayed inside and waited.

"You two will have to drive carefully, I'm certain the highway has yet to be plowed and there may be obscured cars along the road," Panne cautioned, sitting on the floor with Kitte laid out in front of her. "You'll get home safely and be reunited with your daughter in a matter of hours, just play it safe."

"Reunited with her, as long as wherever Maribelle abandoned her didn't end up with her dead," Sully grumbled in response, her eyes focused on the squirming child on the floor rather than the woman she was speaking with. Even a night of attempted sleep hadn't been enough to shake her mind of all the possibilities of what could have gone wrong. "We should have just brought her here, she'd have loved the attention your kids would've given her."

Shaking her head, Panne said, "No, bringing her here would have caused more issues than the current situation did. You made the right choice to leave her at home, but the person you trusted with her life was unable to be properly trusted."

"Oh, don't worry, Maribelle won't be seeing her again for a long time, if ever. None of them will, they'll find that out soon enough." This was a conversation between two fiercely-protective mothers, and with every sentence it was sounding more heated—something that could have elevated to an argument if they weren't talking about the most important thing in their lives. "Say, isn't that why you live out on this farm? To keep your kids safe from people like that?"

"No, we live out here because this is Donnel's family's farm, but I would be lying if I didn't say your experience is a solid reason for why we would never move into a larger town." Panne smiled, a laugh on the tip of her tongue, but she was stopped by two of her other children, both of them flopping onto her back and wrapping her up in their arms. "Goodness, what do you two want?"

"Mom, we've gotta move into town sometime!" Sil squeaked, Bud nodding along with her. "That way we're closer to miss Sully and Kjelle and the horses!"

"We have horses around here," Panne reminded her children, knocking them off her back so that they could scramble to in front of her to watch as she talked. "Of course, the horses around here aren't meant for recreational riding like the ones at the camp are. And the camp is so secluded, it's a shame that it isn't actually yours, hm, Sully?"

That question was hard to answer, because she wanted to say that it was hers in all but paperwork, but after what had happened the last time she was up there she wasn't sure anymore. "Living out in the mountains isolated like that would be nice," she admitted. "But asking the owners to let us move in isn't the issue, it's—"

"The fact that you haven't ridden a horse since the accident?"

"—no, actually. It's that moving up there is asking far too much of the people we work with, since if we did it we wouldn't be working at that station again anymore." This was the first time that Sully had really considered the logistics of making that summer retreat a permanent home, but it wasn't the first time she'd thought about the impact of them both leaving the station. "Not like it really matters what I think, it's not my decision to make alone, and Vaike isn't here to help discuss it."

"I don't think you should include consideration for them in your decision. Do what's best for you and your family, no one will fault you in the end, especially after this." It was while Panne was speaking that the three people outside came back in, covered in snow but loudly talking about how everything looked so peaceful outside. "I believe it might be time for you to go now, am I correct in that assumption?"

"Sure are, we got it all cleared off! Can't believe that we're gonna get t'borrow your car from ya while you fix ours up, but it beats gettin' stuck here longer I suppose!" As Vaike laughed and the two women got to their feet to head over to the front door, the lone child that had gone outside disappeared for a moment, coming back to the group with a familiar blanket in his hands. He wrapped it around himself, before running right in the middle of everyone, much to his mother's dismay and everyone else's confusion.

"Yarne, blanket off and back into your room right this moment," Panne sternly said, looking at the boy and watching him shake his head at her demand. "What was that? Would you care to explain yourself?"

"I'm not going to take it off until I know they're home safe," he answered, pulling the blanket tighter to himself. "It's a lucky blanket, it got me through when bad stuff happened before and it'll make sure nothing bad happens again! And when I see miss Sully after this, I'm gonna give it to her and she's going to have the lucky blanket for herself!" Kids and their superstitions were weird, but Panne could tell that this was something that Yarne really felt he needed to do, so she didn't push against him any longer.

Goodbyes were exchanged and wishes of safe travels were given, and up until they were out on the road headed home it almost didn't feel like they were really leaving the farm at all. "I'm glad that we got stuck there, of all places. Could've been much worse if the truck'd broken out on the road, not in their driveway." Vaike was the one behind the wheel, while Sully was fiddling with charger cables she'd yanked from their truck, so that she could charge her phone and see everything she'd missed. "In a few days, all this'll be like it never happened and we can just go back t'livin' our normal old lives, yeah?"

"Something tells me that won't be the case, but go on," she replied, unsure of how to bring up what she'd discussed with Panne. That changed once her phone had come back to life and was flooded with messages of what had gone on in their two-day absence, in specific something about their daughter being injured in what seemed to be a freak accident. "I…yeah, no, it won't be 'normal' life living after all this. Whoever was watching her because Maribelle couldn't do her damn job let her get hurt and now Stahl's got her, I guess? They're just passing her around like she's a toy, Vaike! We can't let them do this to us or to her. Her life matters, damn it!"

"What d'ya think we should do about that? I mean, it's not like we could just skip town and forget about all 'a them…" The way he suggested that, coupled with a quick turn to look at her with a wink, showed that he'd been considering the same outcome she had been tossing around, even without a proper discussion of it. "I'm just sayin', you've got a hookup somewhere far away from them and I know ya well enough t'know that if ya really wanted to, you'd make it happen."

"Hell yeah I'll make it happen. No one gets to hurt my baby without paying for it." There was still so much to resolve and set straight with the events of the Christmas Eve storm that threw everyone's lives into disarray, but one thing was completely certain: the fates of the two children injured due to wild circumstances would be separated just as their parents wished for it to happen. There wasn't any chance of the secret of Lissa's involvement actually staying secret, and it was known as early as that night that she'd been the one indirectly responsible for the jagged glass cuts on the backs of Kjelle's legs, which tossed aside any chances of there being some kind of forgiveness for what had happened before.

There was going to be a Ylisse-born, Ylisse-raised Feroxi boy living in contrast to a Ferox-born, Ferox-raised Ylissean girl for as long as their parents could force it to happen, as sure as the snow fell in the city every fifth winter.


A/N: this took me months to finish and I'm so sorry? but hey look references to stories I've written before and ones I've yet to post. and is that a sequel hook? (hint: it might be)