please use the scene breaks in this chapter to your advantage! this chapter is best read with short pauses at each scene break!
Seven years ago to the day had been when they'd signed the documentation for their marriage, making it legal despite the wedding being weeks later. It wasn't something that he usually thought about, because as far as he was concerned their anniversary was always on their wedding day, but given what he was in the process of doing it was fair that the importance of the date was weighing on Vaike's mind. It was an outcome he hadn't been expecting to face, but the past several months had been nothing short of a struggle and he felt like he had no other choice but to give into what Maribelle had put firmly on his shoulders, wanting him to make the moves rather than her.
Saying he hadn't tried to come to a different ending would have been a lie, because the moment he was able to do things relatively well on his own (the healing time for the nasty break he'd sustained in his leg was a burden in itself, on top of the marital issues), he was on the move to try and get her back into his life. He'd shown up at the last place he knew she was living, in the middle of the day, a couple weeks before, knowing that she'd be at work and that she'd have to come back at some point and face him there. What he'd expected was to have Lissa there waiting for him, they could talk about Maribelle and how stupid she was in the whole situation, and when she walked in they could all sort everything out. Instead, what he got was Frederick being home, completely alone, and no sort of discussion happening between them that was anything like he'd been hoping for.
"It's been quite a while since we last got to sit down and have a chat," Frederick said once they were both in the dining room, where the table was covered with stacks of books and a miniature file cabinet placed in one of the chairs. "Pardon the mess, my office is being renovated and rather than work somewhere else in the building I've simply brought everything home to do it here, it isn't like Lissa and Owain are going to be around to distract me from what I'm doing."
"They're not gonna be here? Where are they then?" Curious as to how Frederick could be so certain that his wife and son wouldn't be around, Vaike settled into one of the chairs across the table from him, using the chair next to it to prop up his splinted leg. "Ya can't just say somethin' like that t'me and not explain it, I haven't seen Lissa in a long while and from what Chrom told me last time I saw him—"
"In case you're worried, they're visiting with Panne today, Owain enjoys being around Yarne and Lissa and I both think that him spending time with someone so much younger than himself will be good practice for later this year." Clearing his throat as he shuffled a couple of his papers around, Frederick looked at Vaike, who was staring blankly at him in return. "That is what Chrom told you about, I assume? That later this year we'll be adding a second child into our family?"
"I mean, it is what he told me about, and congrats 'bout that, but I didn't know that they were lettin' other kids get t'play with their little one now. Last I heard, they were turnin' people away because they didn't want him gettin' sick from kiddo germs." Vaike was relatively familiar with spending time with Yarne himself, having had Lon'qu being someone willing to help him out when he wasn't extremely mobile, and when that resulted in him sleeping over at their house for a few nights at a time he had gotten his chance with the little boy. In fact, it had been him getting to hang out with Yarne that had been why he'd brought up the idea to parents that he knew, who also knew Lon'qu; he'd never heard of anyone getting to take their child over there until right then. "But that's cool, guess I shoulda seen it comin' that Lissa'd be able t'wiggle Owain's way into their hearts."
Frederick chuckled at Vaike's particular wording, but fell back into his work before he could really say much more on the matter. It seemed as if he'd been right in the middle of something important when he'd had to get up to answer the door, and while Vaike was capable of sitting there and not being much of a distraction he wasn't going to risk letting him distract him too much at all. Whenever he was done with his current stack of paper, he set it aside and looked at the man still sitting there staring at him, watching his every move intently. "Oh, I would've assumed you'd have something else to say that I could play off of, all you did was state something rather true."
"I wasn't aware ya needed me t'say anythin', sorry I'll try workin' harder at that next time for ya." That dining room was usually one of the most boring places Vaike could think of spending time, and this was no exception to that rule; even with someone actively in there he could barely keep himself from wanting to fall asleep. He needed to do something to combat that problem, and the only thing he could think of was to try and make small talk for himself. "So if Lissa's not gonna be here tonight, does that mean that Mari ain't gonna be either, 'cause she's kinda why I'm here right now."
"What Mari does is entirely her own call, she's been looking into finding somewhere to live on her own so she may be going out to do that, or she may join the gathering at the other house, in which case she may not be back tonight." In giving that explanation, Frederick's entire demeanor had changed, and he had gone from seeming serious to looking slightly saddened. "I know that what has happened between the two of you has been difficult for you to handle, but may I ask if you're here to discuss proceedings with her?"
"What? No, I'm here t'try talkin' her out of wantin' t'leave me!" Now that he knew she was trying to find somewhere of her own to live, Vaike really wanted to get it through Maribelle's head that they could make things work and that she could just come live with him, like the old days, but it seemed it wasn't going to happen. "You've gotta help me with gettin' her t'realize how stupid she's bein' in all this, I can't live my life without her and she can't live hers without me!"
"I'd say she's been doing a fair job living her life without you, but I see your point and understand you completely. Next time I see her I'll pass along the offer of letting her live with you, but I'm afraid that she'll turn you down. She's a fiercely independent woman, she's ready to move out on her own." Glancing at one of the papers he had in front of him, Frederick shook his head. "At least, that's what she likes to tell herself as well as us if we're listening, but we know that she's only leaving here to give us the space we need."
"Kinda like why I moved outta Lon'qu and Panne's place when I did, so that they had the room they needed for all that baby stuff. She's just doin' it t'the two 'a ya, rather than the two 'a them." It was proof that they were similar in how they approached events involving their friends, and Vaike hoped that if that were pointed out to her, Maribelle would recognize it and take the hint that she needed to move back in with the man she was still married to, before she made a mistake.
No one ever came by the house for as long as Vaike was waiting there, and while he and Frederick did have a lovely conversation about children and how much work they were, he didn't have anything to take away from what they'd said when he was on his way home. The only real news he had was that Maribelle still really enjoyed being around children, and that she was sad she wasn't going to be living in a house with one anymore, but as there was nothing he could do about that he didn't think it could be significant.
That led to him sitting at home on what was their legal anniversary, the entire house empty around him aside from himself, his belongings, and the paperwork he had laying in a stack on the table next to him. "I can't believe it's gonna have come t'this," he said to himself, unable to even look at the top paper as he knew what it said and that it was the key to the end of everything. "She's gonna sign off on this, she's gonna get this house 'cause it's ours even though she's never seen it, I get t'lose everythin' I ever wanted in life just 'cause she doesn't understand that she screwed up first."
In the days between the meeting with Frederick and where he was now, he'd been focusing on packing up everything he owned for when the inevitable happened, when Maribelle finally showed up at the door telling him to get out because the place was legally hers. That was part of the agreement they'd made before they'd gotten married, that if their marriage didn't last at least ten years that they'd divide up their belongings according to who'd put more money into them, with the exception of the home, which would go to her regardless of anything. They'd gotten a lot closer to that ten-year mark than most people would've assumed they would, but it was still a brutal blow to know that they hadn't technically made it the seven the papers said they did.
He knew what he was going to do with the papers, he was going to show up at the front door of that house even later in the evening than it currently was and pass them off to whoever answered, whether it was Maribelle, Lissa, or Frederick, because he knew that no matter whose hands they were passed to, they'd get filled out in the end. From there he would just wait until he heard everything was over, he supposed, and after that it would be back to trying to move out into another new place of his own, this time somewhere that would be his and only his, and then he'd be on with the rest of his life.
A knock at the front door dragged him out of his thoughts, and he slowly got up off the chair, gently walking across the floor without putting too much weight on his un-braced leg (even though he was three and a half months out from the break, he was still in the healing process and shouldn't have been standing without support). When he got to the door, the person on the other side was still knocking, almost impatiently, and he began to let his hopes rise that maybe someone told Maribelle this is where he was, that she was there to talk about things and he could rip those papers up without ever thinking about them again. With that in mind he worked to unlock the door and open it, a large smile appearing on his face in preparation for seeing his wife on the other side.
What he got instead was a scruffy-looking man who immediately struck fear and bad memories into his heart. "I knew I'd be able to find you if I tried hard enough," Gaius said, giving the man who'd opened the door for him a thumbs-up. "Nice name, by the way. Classy and refined, yet definitely something I'd want to keep far away from everyone."
"Aren't you the guy from the jail?" Vaike had already ignored what was just said and was instead trying to place where he'd seen Gaius before, a question that Gaius nodded to in response. "What're ya doin' here? What's so important that ya needed t'find me years and years after all that happened?"
"It's kind of a long story, and I think I'd rather be inside to tell you it, just in case someone's out here watching me. Mind inviting me in so I can't get busted for trespassing?" Checking over his shoulders as he spoke, almost as if he was honestly fearful he was being stalked, Gaius found that Vaike had moved aside to let him in the wide open front door once he was looking back in that direction. "Thanks, pal. Nice place you've got here, if you don't mind me saying it. Looks homey."
"Yeah, yeah, it's a nice place," Vaike muttered, wanting to add that it wasn't going to be his much longer but not wanting to drag Gaius into that mess. "Doesn't explain why you're here though, so get t'talkin' or else I might just make ya leave."
Looking around the packed-up and mostly empty main room of the house, Gaius noticed that there was a single comfortable chair in the room, as well as a couple metal folding ones, and he took a seat in one of those as Vaike slowly got himself back situated in his own chair. "I stand corrected, this place seems kind of…empty, don't you think? Where's that wife of yours, I bet she'd be all over decorating this place for you."
"She's not here, ain't been here in a long time." Thankful that those wandering eyes hadn't seen the papers on the table, Vaike was starting to figure out why Gaius was there, and he wasn't sure if he should call attention to it before it was brought up, or if he should just let it happen. "Besides, our old place wasn't that decorated either, and I've been packin' up this one for reasons, so there hasn't been time or reason for decoratin'."
"What a shame, I actually came by to speak with her. For an actual reason related to what she does, don't jump to conclusions. I'm not here to steal your wife." Gaius pat his hands down on his legs, drumming them a couple times as he continued looking around the mostly empty room. "Do you know when she'll be back?"
"When she takes this house outta my hands, that's when she'll be here." Not wanting to look at the man making him talk about this, Vaike instead focused on a spot closer to his feet, so he was facing the right direction but not making any kind of contact. "Why'd ya try findin' me here when you're lookin' for Mari? Couldn't ya just look up her office?"
Gaius gave a loud laugh, which dwindled into silence within seconds before he explained himself. "You see, it's a lot easier to explain that I'm looking up the address of an old friend than it is to explain I'm looking up a children's lawyer, when the person I need to make the case against monitors my every search. I was hoping I could walk in here, have your wife here when I got here, talk to her about getting this case taken care of, and then be on with my day, but if you're telling me she's not here I don't know what to do."
"I can give ya her work address, no worries. Just, uh, could ya stop referrin' t'her the way you've been?" It hadn't been until he'd heard Gaius said it multiple times that calling Maribelle his wife had started to bother Vaike, but he didn't want to come out and explain why that was. "She's got a name, go ahead and use it."
"Go ahead and…okay, something's up here and I feel like I'm intruding in the middle of it. Care telling me why you're being so weird about me talking about her?" Immediately after his last word, Gaius hit himself on the forehead with one hand, running his fingers down his face until they were resting on his chin. "No, actually, before we get to that, can I just say that this is the first time that I've felt like I could genuinely talk to someone in a long time? You're a friendly guy, don't forget that. Now go ahead and tell me what's up with you and your lover-girl, I know that you were all about her the first time we met."
"Things are up, it ain't anythin' special," Vaike answered, still not wanting to get into the details with a relative stranger. "Just that we aren't exactly in a good place right now, but don't worry I still can get ya in t'talkin' with her."
"Your hesitance is telling me that I should pry further, but you know what? I'm going to take what I'm being given from you, I'm not going to exhaust your kindness by being a nosy bitch." A grin appearing on Gaius' face, it was almost hard to resist cracking under the pressure he was putting on and explaining everything to him, but Vaike knew he needed to stay strong. If he was going to be sending this guy to Maribelle, he didn't need him knowing exactly what was going on, because there was no guarantee he wouldn't open his mouth about it once he was there. "Say, since I'm here, mind letting me stay a bit longer tonight? Don't exactly have anywhere else to go, unless I want to get arrested again, but doing that would ruin all chances of me getting what I want out of this legal mess."
Even though he knew letting Gaius stay there wasn't going to do any wonders when it came to keeping his problems to himself, the truth was that Vaike was rather lonely at the house by himself all the time. "I think, if ya wanted, stayin' for dinner or even overnight would be fine by me, just as long as you're not plannin' on robbin' or murderin' me when my back's turned on ya."
"I'd never squander such kindness that's being given to me, that'd be horrible. Especially when I know how many law people you've got ins with, messing with you would be messing with the wrong guy." They both looked at each other, before a wave of laughter overtook them both, what Gaius had just said ending up being more hilarious than intended. For the rest of the day, they kept each other company, chatting and getting to know each other better than they had in that short time they'd had together in the jail. They swapped stories about what was going on in their lives, both clearly dancing around some larger issue that had led to where they were—Vaike only mentioned that he and Maribelle weren't exactly together at the moment, and all Gaius would say was that he was trying to get his child back from someone who didn't deserve them.
By the time Vaike was hobbling off to bed and Gaius had been given a couple pillows and a blanket to sleep on the floor (which he actually suggested doing, even though Vaike had offered to do it instead as a gesture of kindness), they had gotten to know each other decently well. And when morning came and nothing had been stolen, nothing was broken, and there was still a sleeping criminal on the living room floor, Vaike felt a lot better about sending the man in the direction of the woman he'd loved for so long. In fact, the idea of having her get wrapped up in a case that he only knew vague details about but was partially his fault for getting her involved in made him want to hold off on giving those papers to her. He could wait until she was done doing something with him even tangentially involved before he dropped that on her.
The morning send-off was quick and easy, once Gaius was awake and had gotten cleaned up to look somewhat presentable for going to request legal representation. "I don't think I can thank you enough for hooking me up with where she works," he said in thanks as they stood just outside the front door of the house, the only vehicle in sight being the work truck that Vaike had barely been able to use in recent months. "I hope that whatever's gone wrong between the two of you clears up, and quick, you deserve a lot better than being lonely and crippled here."
"Thanks, but I don't exactly see it gettin' fixed, we've gone our separate ways and that's just how it is." As fuzzy as their argument in the hospital room was, he could still distinctly remember the hatred and anger she'd thrown at him with her voice, and he knew that coming back from that was next to impossible. "As for you, hope what you've got goin' on gets resolved without too much trouble, you deserve t'be happy just as much as the rest 'a the world, so go get that happiness, yeah?"
"I'm planning on trying, of course." Patting one of his pockets to make sure that something in particular was inside of it, Gaius started walking towards the road, a bit of a spring in his step. "Thank everything the closest bus stop's not that far from here, I'd hate if I had to walk the whole way to the office building." He stopped and turned around right as Vaike opened his mouth to suggest making an offer, shaking his head as if he knew what was coming. "It'd be too highly suspicious if you drove me over, so don't even think about it. What if she happened to see you coming and refused me service because of it? I can ride the bus just fine, it's not like I have anything worth mugging me for."
"Yeah, sure, that's a solid reason but what if someone did hurt ya on the ride? Ain't like you've got a phone on ya t'call me with t'let me know what happened and why ya never made it t'visit Mari, and I'm not callin' her to check." That brought a different idea to Vaike's mind, one that he didn't get stopped from saying before he said it. "When you're done with her, why don't ya just come back here? I'm sure I've got an inflatable mattress in storage or somethin', I could go find that or buy a new one and ya could just stay here with me while all this legal stuff shakes out."
Chuckling to himself as he went back to walking away, the last words Vaike heard Gaius say in his direction were, "I'll see how this all goes before I decide if I'm coming back here or going to the baby mama's place to beg for mercy, but thanks for the offer!" As he went down the road, Vaike had the desire to chase him down and accompany him for at least the first part of his journey, but he knew he wouldn't make it far enough fast enough to do anything, thanks to his leg. Instead, he had to settle for going back into the house and figuring out what he was going to do to pass the time until he heard anything about what had happened.
Seven years ago and one day ago he'd been madly in love and signing his life away to the girl of his dreams, and now he was sending some other man after her. Even though there was a valid reason for it and it wasn't anything romantic at all, the timing couldn't have been worse. At least he wasn't going to formally end their union so close to the legal date they'd started it?
The bus ride put Gaius a couple blocks away from the office building he'd been directed towards, streets he was familiar with as there were several legal offices all nearby that he'd been to time and again for other reasons. This time was different from every other legal issue he'd ever had, and he knew in his heart that there was exactly one person who could solve the problem he was facing, he just had to get through to her and hope she'd be the one to take on his case.
Upon entering the part of the building specifically owned by that legal group, the receptionist at the desk took a look at Gaius and narrowed his eyes towards him. "I'm sorry, but we don't handle petty crimes that are entirely adult-based," he said, as Gaius came towards the counter ready to ask about where Maribelle was. "We've heard a thing or two about you from some of our neighbors, sir, your kind of crimes aren't what we work to put to justice in here."
"What a shame that I'm not here for my own crimes, I'm here for the crimes of someone else against my kid." Pounding a hand down on the counter, startling the receptionist from reaching for the phone to call security, Gaius followed up what he'd said with his simple request, hoping that they could move past their initial misunderstanding without any further issues. "I've been referred here to see one Maribelle Themis, if you don't mind me asking for her by name. She doesn't know who I am or what I'm here for, but someone told me that if anyone's going to solve my problem, it's her."
"Yes, of course, everyone who walks in here without an appointment is here to see Mari. Let me just…call her up to the front, hopefully she can get you right in." As his hand was already on the phone it was much easier for the receptionist to dial Maribelle's extension and call her up through that, rather than leave the desk and go down to her office himself. Once he'd placed the call he put the phone back on the receiver and shook his head. "Take a seat, she'll be out once she's done with her actual work. Don't tell me you're going to socialize with her like everyone else who walks in to see her."
"The only socializing I plan on doing with her is about the case I need to make," Gaius replied, feeling the open hostility the receptionist was shooting at him. "You can mind your own business and let me do what I need to do, you're being a real judgmental guy without even asking me my name or how my day was."
Something along the lines of "let me look you up and show you why I don't care" was muttered in the seconds before the woman of the hour came into the room, looking around for whoever had called her up to the front and ending up with her eyes settling on Gaius. "I'm afraid I don't know you, but I suppose you're the one who's here to speak with me?" she asked, as she walked towards him, hand outstretched and ready to make their introduction brief. "The name's Maribelle, but as you asked for me by name I suppose you were expecting that. Mind coming back with me to my office so we can discuss whatever brings you in?"
After properly shaking her hand and introducing himself to her, glaring at the receptionist the entire time as he'd turned his computer screen to show row after row of online mugshots he'd acquired, Gaius followed Maribelle into the back area of the building, entering her office and feeling uncomfortable the moment he'd taken the seat she'd offered up to him. He knew that he was there for a serious reason, but in the time since he'd gotten to her office all he could think about was how this was the woman who'd hurt the man who'd been showing him such kindness since the previous night. But he couldn't let her know about that part of everything, not until after she'd agreed to represent him and his child in the fight he was going to start. "This is a tidy place you've got here," he remarked, looking around at the decorations she had in the office to try and clear his mind. "Whose kids are those you're with there in those photos? Are they kiddos you've helped out?"
"Some of them are, most definitely." Her answer wasn't dismissive, but it wasn't said with any indication that she cared about what he was saying. "But let's not get sidetracked with all of that, hm? You've come in at a perfect, slow time in the day for me, let me do what I can to get you what you need. Let me just—" she started clicking something on her computer, which he assumed was going to be a form for making their meeting official," –get some preliminary things pulled up before we get started. My receptionist warned me about you, I'll have you know. Sent me some links about your criminal record and how he feels that someone like you is here only for personal gain."
"That's discrimination and I'm not going to hear a word of it." Sticking his nose up at the idea that he'd be so conceited as to walk into a law office geared at cases involving children for his own legal woes, Gaius could only hope that Maribelle wasn't going to fall for the lies the man up front was telling about him. "Seriously though, I'm here to see about what I can do to get custody of my little girl, so her abusive mother can't keep hurting her."
Nodding in understanding as she looked at whatever was on her screen, Maribelle gave a soft chuckle as she closed out of the window she'd opened. "While I would normally discourage any parent with such an extensive criminal record from attempting to have sole custody of a child, none of your crimes seem to be violent by any means. The worst you have is some robberies, but they were without weapon and that's unusual to see." Turning her attention from her computer to him, she laid her arms down on her desk and smiled in his direction. "I am all ears for whatever you have to say to me, now that I feel comfortable being part of this case on your behalf."
"You weren't going to do it if I had too much going against me?"
"There wouldn't have been a point. You could scream abuse all day and night and if there was enough reason to see you as a violent and harmful person, the most the courts would do is put your child in foster care and prevent either parent from seeing her." Maribelle's lips flattened into a straight line as she stared him down, making him feel anxious under her gaze. "You're not just making claims though, are you?"
"I wouldn't dare lie about this, I know what kind of treatment that abusers get when they're locked up and I wouldn't want to subject the mother of my child to that unless she really deserved it. Which, uh, she does." It was at that moment that Gaius wished he could show some sort of pictures to go along with the point he was making, but he had no way to do so that wouldn't be traced to where he was. "My daughter's being emotionally and physically ran through the wringer by that woman and she needs to get out."
Maribelle cracked her mouth open to say something but thought better of it and shook her head, beckoning for him to continue talking. "My little girl, her name's Noire, she's an absolute sweetie and she's the best child a dad like me could ask for, she's been in her mother's custody since she was born because…well, I always thought it was because I'm a criminal who ends up in jail once a month but it turns out that her mother has her for the express purpose of beating her whenever she gets angry. For poisoning her whenever she acts like a normal kid. For controlling her just because she can."
"And have you brought this up with the police?" Maribelle asked, almost predicting what the answer was going to be. "They could arrest the mother and have gotten one of us involved without you needing to come here."
"Don't you think I've thought of that? It's just that every time I've tried, she's decided she's going to leave with Noire with her, which leaves me there when the cops get there. I've been arrested for the stupidest stuff because of making 'false calls', like the time I argued with the cop for ten minutes because he was going to leave without waiting for them to get back! And of course once I'm getting loaded into the patrol car, that's when that bitch comes home, but by then the cops don't care!" Taking in a deep breath to calm himself down from the anger he'd instilled in himself, Gaius looked at Maribelle and forced a smile on his face to unnerve her. "So there's why she hasn't been arrested yet, anything else you want to know?"
"There's a lot more I need to know before I can do anything, even though you just making these claims is reason enough to do some investigating." Tilting her head to the side so the lone set of curls she had loose from the rest of her hair came tumbling off her shoulder, Maribelle's flat-lipped facial expression remained the same. "This is quite interesting though, so please, tell me all you can about this woman and your daughter."
It was like asking him to talk about the first crime he'd willing committed—Gaius was eager and ready to throw down everything he could about the woman he'd been serious with just long enough to have a child with her, only for everything to fall apart not long after she'd been born. He managed to refrain from too much name-calling and making outlandish claims, and when he talked about specific bruises and bumps he'd seen on his daughter he could get detailed enough to make them sound completely real. With every additional claim Maribelle's eyes were widening, her heart hurting at the idea that a young girl was having to go through such pain without any intervention, and he was gaining hope that this would be enough to get her out of that place. "She's going to be six later this year, which it makes me sick to think that she's been living this life for nearly six years," he admitted, the honesty of how he felt making him almost start to cry there in front of Maribelle. "I just want her under my care, I'm going to be a better man if it means getting to care for my daughter so that Tharja can't hurt her any longer."
"Don't worry, I'll do exactly what I can to make sure that you can get her in your arms, and possibly get that woman behind bars, if your descriptions of what she's done to poor little Noire aren't exaggerated. You'll just have to…" Leaning back in her seat and looking at her computer screen, one of Maribelle's eyes gave a bit of a twitch and she glanced to Gaius once more. "Ahem, that's an interesting tidbit of information I just received about you, sir."
"Someone's sending you things about me?" Confused, as the only person he could think of that would be doing something of the sort would be the same woman he was there to bring justice to, Gaius saw the anger rising in Maribelle's face and braced himself for what was to come. "Can I know who it is?"
"Oh, who's sending things doesn't matter, what does matter is that you once attempted to get my father killed for something that neither you nor he did?" Based on how the pitch of her voice was steadily getting higher, it was obvious that Maribelle was not pleased at all about what she'd just learned, even though Gaius knew that the information she'd quoted was easily-accessible on specific pages online. "I knew your name sounded familiar when you told me it, but I had no idea that it was because I'd had to testify that you didn't do anything wrong after his name was cleared!"
"Whoa there, are you going to deny me your assistance because of something that happened when I was a young, dumb teenager?" Looking offended at the idea that she was going to use a personal matter between the two of them as a reason to reject his call for help, Gaius put on his bravest face and simply stared at Maribelle. "Listen here, I only cared about coming to ask you for help because I knew that I'd be able to rely on you after you saved my life back then, now can't you please save my daughter's life now?"
Her eyes closing tightly, Maribelle seemed to be debating with herself about what to do, but she was a smart woman and she knew that telling a client she wasn't going to help him when he had serious evidence that abuse was happening was morally wrong. "I'll get in contact with proper authorities and do a check of the home, after you give me the address and last known location of this woman and child. From there, and this could take a week or so to get fully investigated, we'll proceed however we can." As she reopened her eyes, she could see the relief that existed in Gaius' face. "But this does mean I need a phone number and address for you as well, to contact you at."
"Can we just do the address thing? I can't give you my number, I already told you she tracks my phone and if she saw your number calling me she'd know what was up." Before Maribelle could ask the immediate follow-up question to that, about how he'd give an address without her being there to check the mail at it, he had come up with an idea and held up one of his hands, tiny numbers and words written in his palm. "I've got an address for you, it's where I'm currently staying because I just can't handle being near Tharja anymore, not when she's abusing my daughter right there in front of me and I can't stop her without getting arrested for assault."
"That's fair, as long as you can receive mail there that's all that matters. We can send you any requests for meetings as well as court dates through the mail, which is a bit slower but would keep her from knowing your location." As he gave her all of the information she had requested, something felt off about how he delivered one of the addresses, and it wasn't the one that she was going to have to do a welfare check at. "Sorry to ask this, but why are you trying not to laugh as you tell me where you're staying? Is it that nice to know you aren't with someone you're accusing of child abuse?"
"I'm trying not to laugh?" Gaius was entirely aware that was what was happening, and he couldn't help it, knowing that he'd just given Maribelle the address of her supposedly-estranged husband and she hadn't even flinched. "How weird, I was just telling you where me and this neat dude I met in jail one time are living together. He's a real sweetheart, I bet you'd like him if you knew him."
"Er, thanks for that, but I'm technically still married to someone right now." Freezing for a moment as she looked at her hands and saw that neither of them had any sort of a ring on them, she awkwardly laughed. "Not like you could tell just looking at me, I suppose, so perhaps your gesture of trying to hook me up with your roommate makes a bit of sense."
Struggling even harder to not burst into body-shaking laughing, Gaius had to keep himself from losing control by standing up and pacing around a few steps. "Trust me, I hadn't even noticed that you weren't wearing a ring, I just had a feeling that you weren't exactly attached to anyone at the moment."
"Uh huh, if that's the case then what's so funny, if you don't mind me asking?" Her voice going serious as she finished typing up something on her computer, Maribelle waited until Gaius was sitting back down and hadn't said a word in response to her to start growing suspicious about what he was doing. Of course, because she had no idea what was really happening she'd jumped to a completely incorrect conclusion without thinking twice about it. "Did you just give me the address of a drug den or something? Do I need to call the cops on you to get you out of here?"
"Slow your roll, will you? I'm only laughing because you're so clearly in need of having a man to snuggle at night, you're so uptight and stressed about nothing at all. It'd do you a lot of good to come meet my roommate, it really would." In Gaius' mind, he saw this ending one of two ways: one, Maribelle fell for his trick and ended up at the front door, coming face-to-face with the man who definitely still loved her, or two, she made good on her threat and he was escorted out by the cops, his dreams of getting custody of his daughter forever ruined. "Just say you'll consider it, I'll—"
"Not another word." Whatever she'd been typing up had pulled up a result she hadn't been expecting, and she went from looking at her screen to Gaius and back several times before she loudly groaned. "I'm beginning to doubt the validity of your story again, I'm not getting anything about there being a woman by the name you gave me."
"—oh, is that all? Might be because she's not from Ylisse and probably isn't in a single legal record you can access." While they had been moved on from their conversation by technology, Gaius was thankful that she hadn't, for instance, looked up the address he'd given her and found a resident's name attached to it. "If you can, look in the databases from Plegia, that's where she's from, after all."
"What is it with people specifically wanting to work with me and being from out of the area? I had a long, drawn-out case I was dealing with that involved a couple people who most of their records were located in Valmese databases, pulling from those was a headache that only made their nasty case that much worse." Shuddering as she spoke, Maribelle heeded his word and placed a request to gain information from the neighboring country's database, so that she could know the actual legal background of the woman they were going to be investigating. "I wish that everyone who causes trouble in Ylisse would be from Ylisse, you know? It would make my job a lot easier."
"Because everyone who wants to be an asshole has the lawyers who are going to take them to court in mind when they do their deeds, totally." Although he was speaking with sarcasm in his voice, Gaius realized that it may not have been apparent that he had done that, but he didn't want to sound like he was making excuses to Maribelle if he explained himself. Based on how she didn't reply and went to solely focusing on her computer, he couldn't tell how she'd taken it and wasn't in any position to ask her if she was angry or not.
What he did notice was the clock in her office, and how it had somehow gotten to be a bit later than he'd figured he'd be there. If he waited too much longer, he'd miss the bus back and would have to hang around for another hour to catch the next one, as it wasn't a super busy route. But interrupting her search to tell her that he needed to leave was going to end just as badly as asking her if she was angry would, and he couldn't just walk out and call it a day on his own terms. He needed to get clearance from her that it was good to go, and she seemed to be getting more engrossed in what she was doing on her computer by the second.
Ultimately it meant that he had to stay there until she deemed it acceptable for him to leave, and that came a matter of minutes later. "Okay, they haven't sent me her records yet but my request is in and will be filled first thing in the morning," she announced, closing out of everything she'd opened up in regards to the new case. "I'll have to check those out to know how to approach her, but the welfare check will be happening as soon as possible and hopefully we'll be able to get your little girl away from this woman on a permanent basis within a couple weeks."
"If you're going to let her stay there that long it's fully possible Tharja will kill her or something to get back at me for trying to do this," he said, knowing that it wasn't much of a possibility for that to happen because the authorities would pull the girl out of the house long before that would happen. "I'm going to have to ask you to get her to safety and into my care as fast as possible."
"That is 'as fast as possible', there's still going to be custody hearings and arrangements and all that to sort out before we can give her to you, and that's just how it is. You have yourself a nice night, sir, and I'll be in touch with you via mail as soon as there's something to be said." Maribelle's smile was genuine, even though she looked to be a bit annoyed by something, but there wasn't any time for Gaius to ask about what was bothering her. He'd glanced at the clock again and had exactly two minutes to make it to the bus station to catch his bus, otherwise he'd be hanging around for an hour with nothing to do.
He left the office after a simple thank you, not even feeling like he had the time to remind her that he had a roommate that would be interested in getting to know her, and even though the receptionist tried stopping him on his way out he could not be stopped. There were places he needed to go, people he needed to see, buses he needed to catch…or, more accurately, buses he was going to miss by seconds, the driver not caring that someone was running as fast as they could to get on-board. "Well, this sucks," he said as he sat down on the lonely bench at the stop, the sign on the pole denoting it as a stop stating that the route was only serviced once an hour. "I guess I've got time to think about what just happened in there, think about my Noire, things like that."
The idea of being able to get his daughter into his life permanently was enough to pass the time before the next bus showed up, and after one uneventful ride across town he was let off at one of the last stops on the route. From there it was a short-ish walk before he was walking up to the front door of the house he was currently calling home, but with no vehicles in sight he was worried that he'd be locked outside for a little while. The front door was locked, but he was a criminal by nature, he knew how to get into homes when no one was present; normally, though, it wasn't as easy as climbing through an open, unscreened window around the back of the house, yet that was exactly how he managed to get in.
Even though he'd only been gone a matter of hours, the place looked a lot different than it had when he'd originally left. There was a second actual chair in the living room, a bit dusty from the looks of it but definitely usable, and on the floor in front of both chairs was a deflated air mattress, with a pump and a set of sheets sitting on top of it. It was while Gaius was looking at those items with a surprised face and a warmed heart that he caught a glimpse of a stack of paperwork on the table in the room. That drew his attention away from what had been set out to make him feel more at home, and even though he knew he shouldn't be snooping, he was curious about what kind of papers the guy he was staying with needed.
The fact that they were divorce papers caught him off-guard for a second, until he remembered how they'd both been acting when referring to the other. "That makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it. Her not wearing her ring? Him saying things aren't going to get fixed? Totally understand now." Flicking the top paper, Gaius wanted to see what else was in the stack but respected the privacy of the homeowner just enough to keep himself out of the mess. Now that he knew they were not on good terms at all he did regret giving her the address, but he knew that miracles were possible and maybe she'd never learn that the man she was soon not going to be married to lived there.
With a need to distract himself from looking around for more juicy details about crumbling relationships, Gaius started making the bed on the floor look more like an actual bed, inflating it and putting the sheets on it to give it a nice, homely appearance. He was considering going to search for pillows when the front door was unlocked and opened, Vaike coming inside with several bags wrapped around one arm, a large screen tucked under the other. "Looks like ya saw how t'get in," he jokingly said as he came inside, kicking the door closed behind him. "Fixin' that screen has been on my to-do list since I got this place, guess not havin' it worked out today though."
"You mean you were expecting me to try breaking in?"
"I figured you'd go t'check t'see if there's a back door t'use and find that there's a perfectly good window to climb through with little effort, so yeah, suppose so." Already on his way to the back of the house, Vaike stopped walking and turned to look at Gaius when he realized what he'd just said. "Not sayin' that you're always gonna be a criminal just 'cause you've been one before, but I got your line of thinkin' down, didn't I?"
Impressed that he'd been predicted so well, Gaius couldn't help but give a smug laugh. "Sure did, that's cool for barely knowing me and trusting me enough to not rob the place while you were gone."
"The window opens from the outside right now anyway, it didn't matter if I had it opened or closed, there was no stopping ya if ya wanted t'get inside." Setting the bags he was carrying down on the floor, Vaike resumed his walk towards the back window, screen still under his arm. "You're more than welcome t'go lookin' through everythin' I got, most of it's for ya since I didn't have much here for someone else."
"Thanks, gotta say I appreciate the care you're putting into this for me." What was in the bags was enticing for Gaius, but he didn't want to lose out on socialization time when it was right there in front of him. He couldn't make it obvious that he'd read anything he wasn't supposed to, but he could stealthily drop what he'd done at his meeting at the law office. "Say, Vaike, why are you here by yourself? That wife of your seemed pretty lonely there when I saw her, and I bet it'd do her a bunch of good if she had you wrapped around her all the time. Destressing and all that."
If he was bothered by what he'd just heard, Vaike didn't show it, as evidenced by his focus on getting that screen into the window so that it wasn't a back entrance to the house anymore. "Thanks for lettin' me know how she's doin', but it's just not gonna work out between us at this point. She's doin' her own thing and doesn't seem t'want anythin' to do with me and mine, so we're just gonna let it be."
"That's fine, I didn't tell her to call you or anything like that, so there's nothing to worry about there." Gaius was going to not mention the address thing, even though he knew based on reaction that Maribelle hadn't had a clue that she'd been given the address belonging to someone dear to her heart. "I just went in, stated my case, nearly got arrested a few times, and now I think my daughter'll be coming home to me once everything's sorted out, my criminal record be damned. I can be a good dad to her, I know I can."
"I'd say ya could raise her here under my roof but honestly I don't know how much longer this'll be my place t'be sharin' with others." In the process of taking the window out of its frame for some reason, most likely something that only someone with years of home remodel work had noticed, Vaike couldn't turn to look at Gaius to see how he was reacting to their conversation, but he didn't seem to mind going into everything blind. "I suppose that we could go out lookin' for somewhere for us t'live once everythin' 'bout here falls through, I'd be happy t'keep bein' your living partner if ya feel ya need it."
"We've been roommates for one day and we're already making future plans, I love it." Said with a laugh, Gaius decided that maybe he could look through those bags after all, expecting them to be little housekeeping things like soaps and food. He wasn't surprised to see any of that at all, but he was taken aback to see that there were clothes in one of the bags, things that looked to be roughly his size. It was true that he currently only had exactly what was on his back, but he hadn't been expecting Vaike to buy him anything to make up for that problem. "Dude, what the hell? You went shopping for me, like actual shopping? Clothes and fancy stuff like that?"
"I wasn't the one who bought those, don't worry. And they weren't even bought for ya, they just kinda ended up bein' the wrong size for who did buy 'em and I figured that they'd fit ya better than anyone else I know." A pause, as Vaike mentally went through every man he knew who'd be interested in the clothes in the bag. "Well, I think Lon'qu might've liked 'em, but he was the one tellin' me t'give ya a real chance at a good life here."
Looking up from the bag, Gaius asked, "Lon'qu, huh?" but received nothing in return, which made him snort in amusement. "For being a guy directly responsible for a lot of my jailtime suffering, good to see that he can appreciate me as a person outside of that place."
"He's comin' over at some point t'check on ya, make sure that you're behavin' and not bein' a pain in my neck while you're here," Vaike did end up saying a couple minutes later, while he was hanging halfway out the window he was in the process of fixing. "Not that he thinks you're gonna be one, that is, but he just wants t'check. Might be because he's still being super dad-like and he thinks that we're kids who need attention, or it might be because he just wants t'get outta his place for a little while."
"I'd assume it'd be the second one, wouldn't it?" The question was uninformed, and it became clear right there that Vaike needed to do some explaining of some personal situations to Gaius before anyone else got involved in his life. It was going to be a long conversation and doing it while there was a window completely taken apart might not have been the best idea, so he decided that he'd get to talking once everything was installed back in place. But as it tended to be, when he got his mind set on something there was something else that came up to disrupt it, and falling out of the window and busting the newly-installed screen out of the frame was what happened that time.
Thankfully he wasn't hurt, just annoyed that he'd managed to destroy what he'd just been working on, and so after going back to the store to get another screen, the two men ended up replacing it together, one inside the house and one outside, to keep the incident from repeating itself. After that, they made a quick dinner and sat in the two chairs in the living room to talk about what needed discussing, hitting on several important points along the way. One was explaining Lon'qu and Panne's personal lives and their entire situation surrounding them, another was why the air mattress was set up on the floor in front of them rather than in one of the bedrooms (that being because the bedrooms were filled with furniture and junk that smelled vaguely of fire and hadn't been messed with since that house had gone up in flames), and the final one was about the precarious and unloving situation between a husband and wife who'd once been so loving.
Even though he hadn't said a word about what he'd read, Gaius knew that Vaike figured he'd discovered those papers on the table and had browsed through them, but hearing him have to be up-front and honest about his impending divorce was a lot more distressing than he'd thought it could be. He didn't want to meddle in things and make them worse than they already were, especially since he was still relatively uninformed as to what was going on, even with the quick motion of getting caught up. There didn't seem to be much that could be done to help this guy out, and trying to convince his wife to remain his wife wasn't going to be an appropriate thing to do, given the nature of their relationship, so he was going to have to sit idly on the sideline and listen as everything fell out of place around him.
"Just havin' ya around like this is makin' everythin' I've had t'go through since she left where we were stayin' at the time hurt a little less," Vaike admitted after he'd finished explaining everything he could, making Gaius smile at him. "Kinda wish you'd shown up at my front door months ago, maybe before I fell off that ladder. Who knows, maybe you'd have stopped that from ever happenin', you've got a good luck feel t'ya now that I've really gotten t'know ya a bit better."
"That's good to hear, I think," Gaius said, not sure what he was supposed to say right then, but as the night came to an end and he was left there in the living room alone, laying on the air mattress with no clue what the next day was going to bring, he couldn't help but smile at how he had walked right into easily the best place he could be at that moment. Of course, now that he was accepting that there really wasn't much he could do aside from revel in kindness and wait for any news about the pending case, he decided to make the best of his new situation. And when that meant walking back from the bus stop a few days later (after going to the store to get some things he and Vaike had realized they needed) to see a different vehicle than usual sitting outside, he couldn't be too quick to judge what was going on. For all he knew, that was just Vaike's new ride, even though it looked to be relatively used and seemed to be indicating that someone else was there to visit.
He was immediately greeted with the presence of someone he knew fairly well in passing but not at all in actuality. "Hey, someone break the law in here?" he asked after stepping inside and closing the door, turning fully around as dramatically as he could to look at the men in the chairs with a large, forced smile, targeting in specific the one that should have been there. "Wasn't me, I've been working hard on breaking those habits for myself, so it's got to have been you, dude."
"Ha, very funny. Take a seat, sorry that you're gonna haveta use one 'a the foldin' chairs, but at least make an attempt t'join us, yeah?" Waving towards where all of the metal chairs were stacked against the wall, as they'd been the entire time, Vaike waited until Gaius had opened one and was sitting in it before he went back to looking at his guest, not too bothered by their interruption. "I did tell him you'd be comin' by t'check on him, I just didn't know when that'd be so he didn't know he needed t'be here the whole time today."
"It's fine, I'm doing it as a favor to him and to the city," Lon'qu replied, his eyes having followed Gaius from the moment he walked inside to the current moment, watching him sitting there listening to what was being said. "I don't want to see him coming in and out of the jail, everyone who works there knows he's a good man underneath his foolish ways."
Beaming as if that was genuine praise, Gaius pretended to flip his hair in a display of how proud he was to hear what had been said about him. "I always knew you people there were softer on me than the rest of the crooks and bad guys. A dude gets sent there enough that everyone knows his name and story without having to ask, you're definitely going to take notice of him."
"Yes, and I stand by what I said about none of us wanting to see you come back again, except maybe to visit. You have to have things out on this side of the prison to live for." Shifting how he was sitting, and glancing towards Vaike for a second as he mentally made sure he had everything he needed to keep going, Lon'qu then faced Gaius with a neutral expression and folded hands. "That's what I've been being told here today, anyway, that you're working on getting your daughter back into your life. A noble endeavor, and I wish you the best in it, but if you have Maribelle on your side you'll be fine."
Ignoring that Vaike didn't seem fully comfortable hearing her name dropped so casually, Gaius knew that in order to not seem rude he was going to have to properly continue with the conversation. "Yeah, honestly I've had going to her in mind for as long as I can remember, I've got some personal history with her family and I think it's only fitting that I, you know, get my legal woes settled thanks to her saving my life."
"As I understand it, she has quite the notable family, deep-rooted history in the area and whatnot. Whatever you did to get tangled up with them, I wonder if it's more or less impressive than what someone else in the room has done." It wasn't a question that was meant to be answered, and Lon'qu did reach out a hand towards Vaike to let him know that he wasn't meaning anything harmful by what he'd said, but seeing how distant he seemed to be making himself as they chatted Gaius knew that if they kept going there could be consequences he didn't want to face. "Let's move on, shall we? There's something else I'm interested in asking you while I have you here, unrelated to anything we've just touched on."
Gaius was thankful for the change in topic but he didn't want to abandon what had just been said without giving an apology for making it happen, but before he could decide on how to apologize Vaike had stood up and walked out of the room, saying that he'd be back in a bit. "Er, sure that could've gone better, but I'm game for talking about whatever it is you need to ask me. Got nothing to hide, no reason to tell you no, all that nonsense."
Whatever it was that they were going to be talking about, Vaike had been equal parts interested in hearing it and not wanting to be anywhere near them, and unfortunately he'd decided to act on the latter choice. It wasn't that he was bothered by listening to them talk about Maribelle, but it did make him think about her and about how much he still deeply, truly loved her, despite everything she'd said and done since her initial decision to leave home. He'd give up everything he had if it meant getting to spend time with her one last time before they were completely done with each other, but it was so unrealistic and impossible that he couldn't afford to think about it.
Stepping into his bedroom to give himself some space, the first thing he noticed (like always) was the framed picture on the wall from their wedding day, them looking incredibly happy and in love like they'd been for so long. That picture was humorous in hindsight, as Maribelle had said years later that she'd been super thankful she was being carried then because of slicing her foot open on a piece of broken mirror, even though the cut hadn't been too bad. She'd always been so open to physical affection, but they'd both let the opportunities for it dwindle as the years had gone on, until they'd been sleeping apart and hadn't really done anything romantic or lustful together in a long while. But now that they were apart, nothing was being done for either of them, so were they any better than they had been in those last months of being together?
He sighed, walking past the bed in the middle of the room to go to the closet, opening the sliding door to show that it was mostly empty. If she'd been around, it would've been filled to capacity and then some, but she had all her clothes and most of the other things she'd originally kept in the closet hadn't been recovered after the fire. Opening that door had the effect of reminding him how much space she'd always taken up with how much junk she owned, but it was all junk that she seemed to appreciate. Closing his eyes, he could visualize her standing next to him, complaining about how she needed more space but could always just keep making what she currently had work until they could do something about it. That was followed by a scandalous suggestion, a whispered question about something she'd always kept in the bottom of the closet, in a container that she'd worked so hard to keep stocked…
Not grabbing that box and keeping it safe was one of the things he'd regretted most in the aftermath of the fire, losing all of those special pieces that he and Maribelle had made great use of over the years. Now that she was alone, she probably hadn't replaced any of it, but he knew how empowered and attractive dressing up in skimpy clothes had made her, which meant that she was missing out on all that now. His eyes reopened and he groaned, realizing that he'd been standing there, thinking about all of the good times they'd had together in a more adult sense, with no real reason for it. "I'd do anythin' t'get one more night with ya, Mari," he said under his breath as he closed the closet and went to the bed, brushing his hand across the top of the blankets on it. "Even if it means never seein' ya again after it, I'd do it without question."
She'd always talked about how much she loved pastel colors, about how they brightened up a room whenever she saw them; the sheet set he'd picked out for his bed was a pale pink that she would enjoy if she ever got to see it, chosen for the specific reason of her liking it. The bed was much too soft for his tastes, but if she'd ever slept in it she would've talked endlessly about how comfortable she found it, and she'd enjoy burying herself in the fluffy pillows he couldn't stand using. All of this had been done for her, so that she would be happy with their lives again, but it had been done in vain as she picked what path they were on. It was her fault they weren't together, but he was the one going to lose everything—she'd be the one gaining exactly what had been bought for her, without a second thought about the man who'd purchased it.
It was right there, with his hand on the top of the bed, that he decided that when he delivered those papers directly to Maribelle, he'd give fixing everything one last chance, so that she knew this wasn't the end he wanted for them. "You need to come out here and explain yourself," he heard Lon'qu say from outside the bedroom door. "Gaius happened to refer to what you're planning on doing and I…I want to caution you about moving forward."
"Movin' forward with what, exactly?" Expecting to hear about how he shouldn't be so quick to end things, or about how he shouldn't be the one to give the papers when Maribelle was the one being difficult, Vaike was caught by surprise when Lon'qu instead came into the room, arms crossed in front of him, with Gaius right behind him. "Hey now, what're ya both doin' in here? This ain't becomin' an interrogation, is it?"
"We don't want you doing anything from here on out by yourself. You have friends, let us be at your side as you go through everything." Although he seemed to be unamused by what was going on, it was refreshing to hear Lon'qu being supportive. "And if that means that you have to come back to living with us, we have an extra room for a reason. You can be our guest and we'll keep you company."
That was where Gaius looked a bit uncomfortable, as Vaike going to live with them meant that he was back on his own, but he moved past it in stride. "I'm sure there's plenty of opportunities around here for a guy like me to get on his feet, especially if I'm caring for my daughter by then. You can live with them, I'll keep in touch as much as I can while building a good life for myself and Noire."
"No way, if I lose this place t'Mari over all this, I'll just find somewhere else for myself, it ain't that big of a deal. You and your daughter, you'd need a better place t'live than I would, anyway." Looking at Gaius for a second, Vaike turned to Lon'qu with a plan in mind for a positive outcome for everyone involved. "Would ya let him and his girl live there with ya? I know that might be kinda weird, given that he's a criminal and there's a baby at your place, but I'm just thinkin' that it'd work better that way."
"That would have to be something I would need to take up with Panne, but…" Trailing off as his eyes fell towards the floor, Lon'qu shook his head at something he hadn't said, something that Vaike wasn't sure about. "I have hopes that all this planning is for the worst outcome. We need to not let this go on any longer."
"Don't ya think I've been tryin' t'make that happen for months?"
"She's at my house right now, Vaike. Blissfully unaware that I'm not there because I'm here." His head lifting back up, Lon'qu seemed to have a new sense of determination in his eyes as he locked them with Vaike's. "When I say you have us to be at your side during everything, I do naturally mean right now as well. What do you say, do you want to try to make a difference here?"
The temptation was real, as they stood in the bedroom specifically designed for the woman the last-ditch effort would be in regards to. But Vaike knew that betraying her trust in her friends would be more trouble than it was worth, and no matter how much he wanted to give it a shot he knew that he couldn't do it. The way he shook his head spoke novels on how much he wanted to try and yet was resisting, but neither other man questioned his decision and instead suggested to go back to talking in the other room.
That decision lingered in his mind for weeks, as he hesitated on delivering those papers and making good on what he needed to do.
Her mind had been focused in a lot of places over a handful of days, but one thing was for certain: if anything was going to get Maribelle back in a place where she could work on her cases without an ounce of regret, spending time with her two favorite children would do the trick. She knew when that was possible, and she knew that if she timed everything correctly she could slide right into one of the times where both the boys were at the same place without needing to orchestrate anything out of the ordinary. The first good sign to what she was doing was when she got home from work to no one being there, a lovely note on the inside side of the door saying that Frederick had been called into work due to a slight emergency while Lissa was out like she usually was.
The second good sign, then, was Maribelle showing up outside that "usual" place Lissa went and seeing that she was clearly there. "My, my, this might be going perfectly for me," she said to herself as she walked up to the front door of the house she was now at, giving a solid knock on the door and waiting to see who answered. While she stood there, she gave a quick glance to make sure that no one else was unexpectedly there, and she found that while someone else seemed to be gone, the fact that Lissa was still there meant that the other person she needed there was still around. After the door was opened, she wasn't initially allowed to enter, as it was in fact Lissa who'd opened it and she was so surprised to see her housemate there that she didn't know what to do. "Panne's used to me showing up at odd times, I'm sure she'll let me in no matter what."
"Do you think I'm going to just let someone walk inside her house without her permission? Come on, Maribelle, I've got to be more responsible than that! You just wait right there for a few seconds, I'll be right back!" The door was slammed closed before Maribelle had a chance to respond but she had not been lied to about how long she would be waiting, as Lissa re-opened it almost immediately. "There, was that so bad? She said you could come in as long as you aren't trying to walk out with a kid this time."
"The only reason I even attempted to leave with Yarne in my arms that time was because he was asleep and I couldn't fathom waking him on my own," she argued in her own defense, before realizing that the threat most likely wasn't a genuine one if it was coming from Lissa's parroting mouth. "Whatever though, let me inside so I can see my precious boys! I need some time getting to love on them, I've been having a disaster of a week with work and I don't see it getting better anytime soon."
As the door was fully opened so she could step inside, Maribelle could hear Owain's little yet very loud voice asking something from somewhere in the house, with his sole response being a shush that told more than words could. "Funny you mention how Yarne was sleeping that time, because that's what he's doing now and my child keeps trying to wake him back up to get to shove toys in his face," Lissa muttered, scratching at the back of her head as she thought about how bad of a situation that was. "Let me go get him away from Panne so she can do her motherly thing without him bothering her."
"Well if he's sleeping now, I suppose this means that we'll both need to be here until he's awake so I can be with him and Owain at the same time." What Maribelle said was enough to get Lissa to stop moving towards where her son's voice was still coming from, despite another round of shushing trying to silence him. She turned to face her friend, who didn't quite get why what she'd just said was enough to override the importance of letting an infant sleep. "Did you not think that I'd still want what I wanted all along, even if it wasn't going to happen right away?"
"No, I know you well enough to know you're not leaving until you've gotten what you came here for, but…if I decide I want to leave I'm so leaving, regardless of if you've gotten your time with the boys or not. Owain does need to get to see his father at least a little today, even if it's super late." Holding her fingers up to show that she did mean just a little bit, Lissa didn't wait for Maribelle's sputtered reaction before she was back on her way to stop her son from causing any more trouble than he already had.
Not wanting to be left out for much longer, Maribelle decided to follow her, catching up with her with ease because she wasn't walking too terribly fast through the house. "Okay, I suppose I can understand your point after some consideration, but it isn't every day that I'm here with both boys, you wouldn't strip me of that when I do have it, would you?"
"It's not a guaranteed right to have access to them both at once, besides you get to see Owain every night at the house so wouldn't spending time with Yarne be more important to you?" Even though she'd been caught up with almost immediately, Lissa didn't seem to be bothered by the fact that Maribelle was now trying to sidle up to her, trying to walk step-in-step with her as they went down to one of the bedrooms in the house. As they walked, the sounds of the shushing and innocent chatter were only getting louder, as was an accompanying wail that made both of them jump the first time they heard it. "Oh gods, when I get Owain out of there Panne is going to have my head for him being there in the first place! Maribelle, what do we do? She's going to be furious about this!"
"Calm down, she'll be fine, she usually handles this stuff without too much complaint." It was true that Panne was relatively chill when it came to what happened under her roof in regards to other people's children bothering her own, but still Maribelle wasn't positive that what she was saying was the absolute truth. "Besides, what's the worst she'll do, tell you to leave and not come back? She'll change her mind on that within an hour."
Whether she believed her or not, the moment of reckoning was upon them as they were standing outside the bedroom where the noises were all coming from. Lissa stepped inside first, Maribelle moving enough out of the way to make that possible before she followed her in; they were both immediately treated to the sight of Panne standing in the corner, holding a whining Yarne close to her chest as little Owain stood right in front of her, his hands reaching up towards her as he talked a mile a minute as loudly as possible. She looked to the two women who'd entered and glared daggers at Lissa while she tried to get her son's attention turned to her, and it was only after he'd excitedly noticed that his mom had joined them that he finally shut up. "He refuses to listen to me telling him to quiet down," Panne bluntly said, stating nothing but the obvious. "I have no idea how you're going to manage to raise him and his loud mouth alongside another child at this rate."
"He'll learn how to handle himself around babies real quick, that's why he keeps coming over here, eventually he'll master the 'inside voice' thing whenever he sees someone smaller than him." Having bent down to get her son to come towards her, Lissa wasn't looking at Panne while she talked, so she wasn't able to see the pointed eye-roll that Panne gave her with her explanation. Maribelle, however, did see it and was going to call attention to it (in an agreeing manner, she also wasn't sure how her friend was going to do it), but she stopped herself after seeing how tired Panne looked once she'd gone back to a resting face. That wasn't the face of a woman who wanted social interaction in that moment, but rather someone who just wanted a few minutes of quiet to get her child to sleep, and Maribelle did what any self-respecting woman would do in that situation—she lightly nudged Lissa's leg to let her know something was going on.
Even with his mother looking him dead in the eyes and telling him he needed to be quieter around babies, Owain was still talking up a storm, albeit in a softer voice, and whatever he was saying had been just enough of a distraction that Lissa hadn't even felt Maribelle's tap. "I think we should maybe step out to give Panne some privacy," Maribelle ended up saying, already backing out of the room without actually exchanging a single word with the woman whose best intentions she had in mind. "You can scold Owain somewhere else, we need to leave here right now."
"What do you mean, right now? I'm in the middle of something, don't you think we can wait?" Still oblivious to anything else going on around her, it wasn't until Owain had started following Maribelle out that Lissa decided she could go as well, and as she was standing back up she saw the exact same sight that Maribelle had when she'd made her decision, answering all questions and making their retreat from the room that much swifter. Once they were back in the living room, Owain sitting quietly on a chair after his reminder of needing to use a soft voice when around babies, Lissa turned to her friend with an expression that made her look offended about something. "Why'd you not just say that Panne needed a moment to herself, I'd have totally given her that if you'd just said so."
Maribelle shrugged, the thought process that she'd had there in the room not quite available for recollection. "I figured she'd tell me I was wrong if she heard me say anything more than I had, she's really particular about how she's treated and all that. You know, basic friendship things you should know about her, it's been almost a year since you two became friends so you can't play stupid about everything forever."
"Excuse me, can you maybe not say I'm playing stupid somewhere my son can hear you? I don't want him thinking he's got a dumb mom, I'm just not always the best about everything and that's okay." Now looking really offended, and with reason, Lissa went to sit down next to her son, but when he refused to make room for her in his chair she scolded him for that before pushing him aside and forcing herself into the chair, him having to move up onto her lap to make things work.
"You don't have to take your anger at me out on him," Maribelle reminded her, walking around the room to try and avoid being too close to her friend. "I wasn't trying to make you look bad in there, or out here, or anywhere. I'm just speaking the truth as I understand it, and if you can't handle it you're—"
"Maribelle, it's nice as always to see you've invited yourself into my home, but perhaps next time you can do it without causing too much of a distraction to Lissa, so she doesn't leave her son unattended?" The fact that Panne had come into the room without either of them realizing it meant that when she spoke, they were both surprised by it, but she sounded just as tired as she'd looked when they'd last seen her so her coming to join them made little sense. "Getting Yarne to sleep is much more difficult than you'd expect, especially when I have a little boy trying to ask me every question under the sky, no thanks to you and your inane ability of showing up when it's least convenient."
"—jeez, way to put me on blast, I didn't know it was baby's naptime when I thought to come over, you can't blame me for everything." Holding her hands up defensively, Maribelle hoped that her stating that she hadn't meant to cause harm would be enough to get Panne to back off of grilling her, and it was. However, judging by how Panne was focusing only on her, almost as if Lissa and Owain weren't present, she knew that she was about to get an earful about something else, and she needed to stop it before it started. "Please, if you're going to tell me I did anything else wrong, can we at least do it when there aren't small ears present for it? I don't need whatever you're going to say to me being repeated by certain young mouths."
"I would never chew you out for anything unrelated in Owain's presence, don't you worry." A small smile appeared on Panne's lips, a sure sign that everything was going to be okay in the end, but just as it lulled Maribelle into a sense of security it was ripped out from underneath her with a highly focused question: "Now, as I understand it, you've been working on a rather important abuse case at your job, one that news relating to it keeps ending up here because Lon'qu knows someone involved in it. Is this true?"
"Ooh, work gossip time? Maybe since Panne's here you'll actually say something juicy that isn't just complaining about specific parts of the legal system!" Adjusting how Owain was across her so that he wasn't making her uncomfortable, Lissa sounded excited to hear whatever it was Maribelle was going to talk about.
But Maribelle didn't quite know what she was going to say, because something felt strange about how the topic had been approached. It wasn't usual that someone asked her about a specific case, unless it was a high-profile one that was all over the news, but what she was having to do with Gaius was only important in that it involved records from across borders as well as child endangerment. Neither of those things were supposed to be common knowledge, though, and the only people outside of her office and the officials she'd been in contact with in Plegia who knew those facts were Gaius himself and the officers she'd called to his house to check on the status of the child. The only way that anyone would even know that it was an abuse case was if they'd gotten that information from the source, but why for Naga's sake would someone be in contact with Gaius over any of it? "Er, I suppose I am involved in a pretty important case, but it's more important because of how many layers there are to it. A criminal fighting against the clearly-mentally abusive mother of his child? It's not every day that you're representing a bad man who's in the right, but that's what I'm doing on this one."
"Interesting, very interesting. I heard from someone at the hospital that the girl's been in and out of there many times recently with unexplained injuries that her mother insisted were from rough playing or falls, and you know if this has been happening while I was there I would have alerted you right away to the injuries." No matter what it was that Panne was trying to accomplish by bringing this up, it was clear that she had some personal investment in the whole thing, especially given how sad she sounded as she talked. "I feel like this is a failure on my part, to not have moved someone diligently checking all patients for traits of abuse to my position in my absence. All of this could have been avoided, I'm sure."
"Don't say that, I'm pretty sure it would have ended uglier if we'd gotten the girl out of her mother's care while her father was still in jail. He's really insistent that he gets to get custody of her in the end, rather than her going into foster care or up for adoption." Talking about that particular fact made Maribelle immediately feel bad, knowing that referring to those kinds of outcomes with Panne was never a good thing to do. "At least this way she'll get to stay with one of her parents, right? That's the best outcome, I'd say."
"I'm inclined to agree with you, and if Lon'qu were here he would do the same." Her fingers twitching as if she wanted to do something with them, Panne turned her focus away from Maribelle and onto Lissa, who was listening intently to what it was they were talking about. "What about you, hm? How do you feel about this case?"
"I don't actually know enough about it to have an opinion, believe it or not," Lissa said with a laugh, rooting herself in the situation as an observer. "You two just keep talking, I'll be sitting here listening and trying to decide how I feel about it!"
Still not sure what she was supposed to be baited into talking about, but knowing that there must have been some key part to the case that she was supposed to mention, Maribelle thought carefully about what else she could say before deciding to play it safe. "Well, if you're looking for me to give you any ammo to make a decision with, sadly there's not much more I can talk about right now. Tomorrow's the day that Gaius should get my mailed request to return to my office, so either tomorrow afternoon or the following day will be when he's back to discuss things with me."
"You're mailing his information to him?" Panne asked, unsure if she'd heard what Maribelle had said correctly, and in response she was told the story of how he gave his address, then immediately attempted to hook Maribelle up with his roommate. "What an interesting situation, certainly you didn't take him up on that offer though, not when you're still legally married to someone."
"What's the worst that would've happened if she had? I think she totally should've at least given a chance to this roommate guy!" Lissa's honest feelings towards what she'd just heard made Maribelle start stammering, trying to explain why she couldn't ever bring herself to do such a thing, while Panne smiled to herself, looking between the two ladies with a sense of knowing that she couldn't explain to either of them. Even when she was caught looking smug about something, it wasn't called out, nor was it really acknowledged, with Lissa turning her sights on making Maribelle explain why she couldn't bring herself to at least go out for coffee or something with the roommate.
That started their back-and-forth about what was socially acceptable when married yet separated from one's spouse, an argument that only ended when Panne disappeared from the room without any indication as to why. Thinking that they'd upset her with their discussion, the two of them came to the agreement that what Maribelle had done by rejecting the offer was the most appropriate, but once she'd fully settled things with her husband then she should go back and take up the offer. But when Panne came back, she didn't seem upset at all, and as her arms weren't actively holding her child it wasn't like she'd gone to get him after he'd woken up from his nap. Whatever she'd done there in her time away was going to remain a mystery unless someone asked, but neither Maribelle nor Lissa wanted to offend her by prying into her activities.
If they'd know that she'd disappeared to let Lon'qu know something she'd just witnessed with her own two eyes, so that he could use that information how he saw fit where he currently was, they might have allowed for the evening to take a much different course. Unaware of how she was pulling strings neither of them were meant to see until it all was stitched together, the night progressed exactly as Maribelle wanted it to, complete with more pointed questions about cases and ending with getting her wish of spending time with both of her little boys. As far as she was concerned, her life was going exactly how she wanted it to be in that very moment, even with all the craziness her job was putting her through. All it would take to shake things up, though, was one person passing a message along that shouldn't have ever been shared.
She had far too many pairs of ears listening to her every word to keep that from happening, and there only needed to be one person running their mouth to make her so-called perfect life fall apart once more.
There was never going to be anything close to an easy court case, but even with how rapidly things were escalating in his case Gaius didn't think that he'd be able to fight for the right to get his daughter under his care that summer, let alone that year. He figured it'd be a multi-year deal, that he'd finally get her once she was old enough to drive, or at least old enough to be considered a young woman. That was the magic of having been lucky enough to get Maribelle involved, he supposed, because she made sure that she got his case into the courts as fast as she could—a matter of weeks, in fact. It was something about the nature of what he was accusing someone of, and how there seemed to be a whole bunch of proof to back up his claims, and the fact that a child could become seriously injured or killed if they didn't work quickly enough.
He wasn't going to complain about the speed of getting it to in front of a judge, but there was something he noticed after several meetings with Maribelle: every time he came back to the house after going to see her, it was almost as if Vaike didn't want to interact with him. He wasn't angry and he definitely didn't seem upset, but his mind was clearly in other places that weren't there at the house where his physical body was. To try and keep that from happening, Gaius made it a point to not really talk too much about what he was doing while he was out, but even if he stayed quiet it wasn't a secret that he was spending a lot of time going over to the law office to talk with Maribelle, especially not with how often she was sending messages through the mail.
What was he supposed to do about it all, though? If he left, he wouldn't have a steady place to call home and that would jeopardize his chances of getting his daughter back. If he stopped going to the meetings, the case would be forced to end and Noire would most likely get pulled from her mother's care and placed in someone else's home on a permanent basis. There were other worst-case scenarios he was playing in his head, over and over, making him wonder if he was being selfish by fighting for what he believed in, even if it was hurting the person he was staying with.
But the truth was that it wasn't the act of Gaius meeting with her that was hurting Vaike, but rather the possibility that he was going into her office and talking about him. Telling her what he was up to, letting her know about the papers he'd gotten, things along those lines that he wasn't ready for her to hear about. If she was going to find out that he was still not working and was waiting for the perfect moment to drop the divorce papers on her front step, she'd come over to the house and get everything for herself, ridiculing him the whole time about how he'd managed to ruin his own life so many times over without her around. At least, that was what the negative version of her in his head was going to do, but it had been so long since he'd thought about her and their relationship in a positive way that he didn't know what else would possibly happen.
He had to do something about everything that was going on, and he needed to do it before the weight of all the issues began to weigh too much more on him. Living his current life wasn't fun, he was spending all day doing things around the house or chatting with his housemate about everything but personal issues, he'd occasionally go out to see friends but everyone had started to get so wrapped up in their lives that they felt they didn't have the time to dedicate to him. That didn't stop him from going over to people's houses, spending hours playing catch-up with his friends while they tended to their chores or even their children—and it did mean that over the course of a few weeks he had a lot of quality time with a lot of different children.
Whereas Gaius was polite enough to not directly mention Maribelle in any of their conversations after a point, not everyone else was aware that they should tread lightly when it came to talking about her. Anyone could tell that just hearing her name was enough to make him quiet himself from whatever he'd been saying, closing in on himself as he thought about how the person he was talking to was so unaware of what had happened between them that they found it acceptable to bring her up. There were people that knew they weren't on good terms, but they acted like it wasn't anything to do with them and talked about her anyway; it came to the point that, even though he was holding a child on his lap when Maribelle was brought up, Vaike attempted to swing at someone for talking about her in a way he didn't like to hear.
It was asking if she was still doing good things for people in the middle of nasty situations that they hadn't asked for, and he'd immediately gotten upset about hearing Virion's condescending voice asking the question that he didn't care he was holding the child the whole fight had been over in the first place. What he did care about was that he was expected to know what his wife was up to, when she'd separated herself from him because of their case in the first place. "Do you think this sort of behavior is acceptable in my own home?" Virion snapped once he realized he'd almost been punched for what he saw as an innocent question. "Why, if Catie were in the room I'd have her kick you out for treating me in such a manner, and with our daughter present as well!"
"Present? She's more than present, I'm holdin' her for ya," Vaike replied, still having one arm wrapped around the little girl sitting in his lap, who was staring in her father's direction with a smile on her face. "I bet she woulda loved seein' ya get decked for what ya said, she seems like the kind 'a girl t'appreciate that sort 'a thing."
"By all means, she would enjoy it, but that is simply because she enjoys watching anyone get hit! That does not give you anything close to permission to go ahead and hit me!" Huffing as he saw the light in Vaike's eyes fade after he realized he wasn't going to get to pretend to swing at him a second time (as he couldn't actually hit him, not in his own home when he was romantically involved with a police officer who had arrested him before), Virion dramatically fell onto the closest chair he could find, pretending like he'd just fainted into the spot. "I'll never understand how someone like you landed a wonderful woman such as Maribelle, but what I do understand is that you have some issues you need to work out with her, and quickly, if your reaction to hearing her name is to grow violent."
"The violence thing ain't 'cause of you mentionin' her, don't worry, it's 'cause it's you talkin'." Now, if there was one thing Vaike had grown to love over time, it was having a joking and fun relationship with Virion, who was usually drinking and acting snooty whenever they were near each other. But this was a time that they were both completely sober and needing to be serious, and he was still playing up the jokes just because he could. After a few moments of silence between them, he cleared his throat and moved on, not wanting to talk about what was sitting there for him to address but knowing that it would be rude to ignore it. "I'm well aware of the issue we've got between us, I'm just…tryin' to come up with a way t'fix it all without it endin' badly."
Virion sat up, loudly humming in thought. "Perhaps you could tell her all her positive traits and ignore all her bad ones, just for a moment? That's a sure-fire way to get straight to her heart, she'll admire your honesty and willingness to look past her flaws."
"That only works if they're not separated, idiot." Poking her head into the room to see what the men were doing, Sully had to dodge a decorative pillow that was lobbed at her, laughing the whole time. "What I think Vaike here needs to do is step back and ask himself if she's worth all this damn effort. She chose work over love, shouldn't you decide to do the same and give up on her sorry ass?"
"I don't know 'bout that, if I was gonna give up on her I think I woulda done it already." There was something to what Sully just said that was sticking in his mind, but he wasn't sure which part it was and he didn't want to hesitate and hold her up until he figured it out. "I'm tryin' t'come up with some way t'make her mine again, but all I've got are bad ideas that I know she's gonna turn down. After a woman yells at ya when you're recoverin' from gettin' your leg fixed up, y'know that it's gonna take more than a quick 'I still love ya, come home' to get her t'change her mind."
"You're right about that," both of them said simultaneously, sharing a glance between them after they noticed what they'd done. It was Virion who continued to speak, while Sully came properly in the room to grab Kjelle before she somehow got thrown around like the pillow had been, even though the person who threw the pillow and the person holding her were not the same. "If you need any suggestions we are more than willing to help you, seeing as it was our mess, with my former assistant, that indirectly caused this issue."
Under his breath, in the moment directly after Sully left earshot so that she couldn't turn back around and retaliate against what he said, Vaike muttered, "Yeah, because what I need right now is whatever stupid idea you've been workin' on for me. I need somethin' that'll actually work, not something bad." Louder, so that everyone else could hear something that wasn't just an angered whisper, he told them both, "I appreciate the fact that you're wantin' t'be here for me, but wouldn't it've made sense for ya t'be there when ya were actively ruinin' my marriage with your problems?"
"Hold on a second, we were there for you during all that!" Turning on her toes to face him even though she'd been trying to leave the room, Sully shook her head at what she'd ended up hearing. "I mean, you were the one who was kind of there for us, but who the hell cares about the specifics of all that? Fact is, we spent a lot of time together when everything was falling apart because of this little girl, and now you're going to tell us we didn't?"
"That ain't what I said, and even still I was there helpin' the two 'a you out, neither 'a ya were helpin' me out 'bout anythin'. But whatever, past's in the past, we'll get over it and I guess I could use your help if either 'a ya have anythin' t'give." The whole time he was talking, Vaike knew that he should've been focusing on the people he was speaking to, but his attention was pulled solely to the youngest person in the room. Coming over and spending time with Kjelle was always fun, she wasn't too much to handle and if she started to whine one of her parents would make sure she was taken care of, but it wasn't until he was voicing the fact that he'd been so focused on their problems that no one had focused on his that he realized that she was the problem they'd been caring so much about. She was the child that had indirectly caused a marriage to crumble, one person focusing too much on getting her where she belonged while the other was left to be wishful that she'd get there. She wasn't even a year old, and she had the destruction of the relationship of two people she was completely unrelated to on her hands.
It was right there that it sank deep into the core of Vaike's being that all of this, all of the problems and heartache he'd experienced in the past year, were because of a child so young, she still didn't know how to walk. He and Maribelle were just being stupid about each other, about what they wanted and how they wanted to go about it, and once she realized what the root issue of everything was, she'd think it was stupid too.
He had to endure the rest of the conversation, with all of the bad ideas and suggestions two people who clearly didn't know how to respectfully handle relationship issues could provide, before he could go home and properly plot out what he was going to do. The issue there was that, even after saying his goodbyes and whispering a "thank you so much" into the ear of a child who didn't understand what he was saying, he wasn't going to get an opportunity for a quiet moment to think about everything. Going home meant having to deal with Gaius being there, and that meant awkward conversation dodging the big issues in his life at the moment, provided that anything new had happened.
Coming home to find out that the case had been wrapped up rather quickly and that, as soon as she finished a health evaluation to make sure she wasn't deeply injured, Noire would be coming to live with them was not what Vaike was prepared for. "That's good news, right?" he asked after Gaius spelled it all out for him, sounding thrilled to have something to talk about. "She's outta that bad place she was trapped in and is gonna get t'stay with ya from now on, ain't that what ya wanted?"
"That's exactly what I wanted, but it's all happened so fast that I don't even know how to react to any of it!" To say he was happy would be an understatement, as this was the most excited about anything Gaius had sounded in a very long time. "My little girl's finally free of her mother, forever, and that's all we could ever ask for. A sweetie like her doesn't deserve that kind of punishment."
"Ya better go and thank your lawyer for puttin' on such a great case then," Vaike told him, before catching what he'd just said and realizing that maybe he didn't need a bunch of alone time to plan out what he was going to do. He could do it on the fly, without the person he was doing it with knowing what he was doing! "Say, why don't ya go and do that tomorrow, since we both know she's not in her office on weekends unless it's real important that she be there for somethin'?"
"Since she wasn't there yesterday I'm sure she will be there an extra day at some point, but you would know Maribelle better than anyone else, wouldn't you?" Gaius' eyes went wide as he tried to apologize for what he'd just said, but Vaike waved it off, saying that it didn't bother him to hear it. "Okay, phew, thought maybe that'd be the last straw or something after all of this. Wouldn't put it past my luck to get to this point just to lose it all."
"No, don't worry, didn't ya just hear me givin' ya advice about what t'do about her? If I was gonna get upset 'bout her gettin' brought up, I wouldn't have done that, don't ya think?" The fact that Vaike was saying all this with a straight face, not really showing if he was being genuine in his meaning or not, made Gaius wary that he was going to wake up in the morning with a request to leave and never come back. All night that possibility took root in his mind, keeping him constantly guessing if he should try and atone for what he'd said or not, but he didn't want to risk making anything worse.
There was nothing telling him to get out in the morning except his own mind, and he made sure to act on the suggestion he'd been given, sneaking out the front door without telling anyone where he was going. It was obvious that he was going to go see Maribelle, because that's what he'd been told to do, but he knew that without telling Vaike where he was going, it was possible that he'd jump to strange conclusions. However, even with the way he was worrying about everything, Gaius just wasn't able to correctly nail down what was actually happening there in the house.
If he'd bothered to pay any attention to anyone but himself there that morning, he would've heard the faint sound of music playing from the only usable bedroom in the house. The whole time he was thinking about telling Vaike where he was going, Vaike had been caught up in his own task, hoping that Gaius was going to do exactly what he ended up doing. He needed to know that Maribelle was going to be at work, he needed to know that she'd be busy with clients for at least a few hours, he needed everything to go perfectly if his last shot at fixing everything was going to have a chance.
Two days beforehand, the day she'd been out of her office, that had been because that was Owain's birthday and she was spending time with him instead of working. That meant that the current day was their anniversary as everyone else knew it, and although he'd chickened out about doing anything on their legal anniversary he wasn't going to throw away that second shot. To motivate him on what he was doing, he'd moved the paperwork there into the bedroom with him, and he wasn't going to let himself leave until he'd figured out what to do that didn't mean taking those papers to her front door and asking her to make their separation official.
When he did know what he was going to do, he didn't bother checking the time to see how late it was, how close it would be to when Maribelle would be done with work. His spirits were high, his mind was set on what exactly he was to say and how he'd try and convince her to give up living separate from him and give their love another shot, and he wasn't going to take rejection lightly but he had a backup plan if she still turned him down. But what he wanted to do required a few things he couldn't handyman his way into there at the house, so even though he wasn't aware of what time it was when he left he still had ways to kill time before the moment of no return.
In his eagerness to leave, he did forget to turn everything he'd been using off before he left, and so when Gaius came back to the house that afternoon, having spent a while talking to Maribelle before going into town and trying to prepare his life for having his daughter back in it, he was greeted with no one being there but the sounds of music he'd ignored before. "Huh, how about that, never took the guy to listen to this sort of crap," he mused as he followed the sound of cheesy, romantic pop music down to the bedroom, pushing the door open to find it predictably empty. The computer in the room, which he'd never seen before but he figured that was what Vaike spent most of his free time messing with because he sure wasn't working, was open to a playlist that seemed to be somewhere in the middle of its rotation, based on where the current song was on the screen.
It was rude to snoop through the belongings of the man who'd given him somewhere to live, but Gaius was insanely curious about what the playlist was for and why it was still going. He scrolled up to where the name of the playlist was and smiled to himself when he read it—To Mari, With Love, the title said, and suddenly the fact that it was romantically cheesy songs made perfect sense. "She told me today was your anniversary and that she wanted to talk to you more than anything today. Bet you'd be happy to know that, but you're not here." Being polite, he closed the window on the screen and the music stopped, but the silence in the room only made the fact that he didn't know where the guy was feel worse. Calling him wasn't an option as his phone was his home phone, and any messages he received would be through the computer there in the room, so Gaius had to hope that Vaike was out there making good choices for himself.
That choice, of course, was sitting down the street from where he knew his final destination was going to be. Maribelle's car wasn't outside, she must've still been at work and he had no idea when she'd be back; while he could have gone inside and made himself comfortable speaking with the people who were there, and maybe giving Owain a bit of a late round of birthday wishes, he didn't want to ruin what he had in mind by getting too involved in some unrelated conversation. He needed Maribelle to not know that he was coming, so that she could be surprise and taken aback by his grand romantic gesture that was going to blow her away and make her his once more.
With every few minutes that passed he began to question more and more if what he was doing was worth it, or if he should have just brought the papers with him and dropped those on the doorstep. Was the chance getting to hear his wife tell him she didn't love him anymore and that he needed to leave her alone permanently going to be worth the possibility of her coming back into his life with no questions asked? Every reward had its risks and he knew it, but this was the risk of forever losing something he'd had for seven years in legal marriage, and for years before that. Maribelle was the only woman he'd ever really loved and the only one he could ever see himself loving from then on, and he needed her to know that he felt that way, regardless of all of their differences in life.
The thing driving him to stay there was that love, that passion for her despite her leaving him, blaming him for everything she'd done wrong, yelling at him when he needed her support most…for being a horrible person to him more frequently in not in recent memory. Even though she was flawed, she wasn't a bad person, and he saw that in her every time he'd seen her smile and heard her be happy about something. She had good intentions with everything she did, and he knew that her separating herself from him had been done because she felt it was for the better of them both, even if it hadn't really been. And now he was in a place where she could come back into his life and everything would be fine no matter what, and if she turned him down then they'd be even worse off.
He took in a deep breath as he heard a car drive by, but it wasn't a familiar one so he exhaled, no longer worrying that he'd been caught in the act of spying. His mind was racing with all the thoughts he'd pulled together earlier in the day as he was coming up with what to do, trying to make something so magical that it would get her to come right back to him. The music she loved was stuck on repeat in his head, all the songs they'd listened to together and made fun of while they were dating and married, up to a few songs that he'd been told she really enjoyed. On the seat next to him was a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers, tied together with a pink bow, sitting next to her favorite blush wine (that he paid a lot more for than he'd like to admit, despite being served for free at fancy restaurants) as well as a box that was held closed with a bow similar to the one on the flowers. These were gifts meant for a proper anniversary celebration, and even if he wasn't able to convince her to come back he was going to try to get one last time with her before they were done for good.
It was beginning to get dark when he noticed that her car had finally pulled up in front of Lissa's house, and that meant that it was time for him to take action. After making sure he looked decent in his rearview mirror, he grabbed the things out of the seat and got out of his vehicle, slightly limping his way down the sidewalk until he was walking up to their front door, heart beating wildly as he moved. There was one chance to make this work, and he had to hope that everything was going to go according to his exact plans.
His knock was shaky, more like a nervous teenage boy trying to get a girl for the first time and less like a man attempting to get his wife of seven years back into his life. He could see someone looking out through a window to see who was there, Owain's face completely visible through the blinds, and when the boy disappeared it felt like that might have just put an end to what was meant to happen. Yet, when the door came open it was pulled all the way open, Maribelle standing in the doorway with one hand creeping up over her mouth in surprise at who she saw there waiting for her.
"Mari, I know things haven't been the best, but c'mon, we've gotta put an end t'this," he said, offering her the flowers and the box with the wine tucked under his arm so it didn't drop. "I love ya and I'm sure ya still love me, what d'ya say we just go back t'my place for a bit and talk everythin' out?"
Her mouth was clearly moving as she tried to come up with the appropriate words for a response, but it wasn't until she'd opened the box and seen what it contained that she made any sound, a soft laugh that quickly turned into innocent giggles. "I don't know what you're expecting me to do with this," she replied, closing the lid on the box and making him squirm at how she shifted her gaze onto him, sizing him up, "but I'd be more than happy to speak with you about 'everything', as you put it. As long as wearing this—" she jostled the box as she referred to it, "—comes with the perk of breaking into that wine at the same time."
"I'll do anythin' for ya at this point, Mari, that's how much I want ya back."
"Then consider it an anniversary date."
A/N: this is long but what comes next is longer, and for that I am sorry
