Alaya walks in carrying a small backpack, holding a box and a large genuine smile, "Room service."
Fiona smiles in return and lets her wife enter. "You seem to have plenty. How hungry do you think I am?"
"This," Alaya holding up the box, "Is the entertainment."
Fiona closes the door.
Alaya quietly places the box on the bed. Fiona goes to open it but finds it lock.
"After dinner." Alaya teases.
Alaya then goes to the kitchen area and pours from the dewar bottle two bowls of hot stew. "Will you slice bread?"
Fiona nods and slices the bread. The close proximity makes her blush. She remembers her promise to her future family and regains composure. She glances her wife and accidentally cuts her finger. She quickly puts it in her mouth.
Alaya turns to put the bowls on the small table, returns to the kitchen and grabs a cloth. She tears a small ribbon, pulls the finger out of her wife's mouth. "I can smell the blood," as she wraps the ribbon of cloth like a bandage. "You are distracted. I don't believe I would have done any better. My mind is also unhinged." Alaya jokes to her wife, "We can skip the bread or tear it off like the barbaric French."
As they sit and eat across from each other Fiona asks, "What did you do today?"
"I finished a report for Scotland Yard. What did you do?"
"I slept, read and enjoyed the peace and quiet."
Alaya nods.
"Where are you sleeping?"
"I brought up the cot and sleep in my office. I do not mind."
"Did you contact Mary?'
Alaya nods, "Would you like the good news or bad new first?"
Fiona sits back, "Usually I would want the bad news first. Today I want the good news."
"You have two weeks off. Apparently Louisa already called in for your schedule change. You are not on call or available for surgeries."
"That is truly wonderful. Would you mind if I spend it here?"
"You spend it as you wish. I just ask that you do not make any drastic decisions without consulting me, please?"
"Of course." Fiona takes a deep breath, "Now with the bad news."
"You will be living at the hospital for two weeks when you return. It seems we shall not share a bed for a month."
"Two weeks," Fiona thinks about it for a bit. "Two weeks. I believe we can adjust. Maybe we have meals together in my office?"
Alaya nods.
"Who said we shall not share a bed?"
"I just assumed."
"My dear Silurian wife, please don't assume the worst." Fiona smiles, "You must always assume the best. You either follow your mother or you follow me. You have the ability to lead. Assume I will follow ... always."
Alaya's mind wonders as she remembers her education and her time at NNYU. "You are right. Just be patient as I regain my bravery."
"Please be speedy with concurring up your courage." Fiona smiles as she takes a sip of water and finishes her stew.
Alaya takes in her surroundings. Her wife is drinking water, the whiskey bottles have not been emptied, Louisa rescheduled. Something is going on. "May I be so bold to ask questions?"
"You may. I reserve the right to avoid an answer."
"You are drinking water when there is Whiskey bottle within reach and Louisa already called in for your schedule change to Mary. Is there something you are not telling me?"
"What is our entertainment?"
Alaya waits for her wife to answer.
"I am not sure we are ready."
"For what?"
Fiona stands and taps the padlocked box, "What is inside?"
"Me."
Fiona squints her eyes, "Explain?"
"I will show you." Alaya eats her last bit of stew and cleans off the table. "Make yourself comfortable on the bed. We both want to be nearby."
"Oh." Fiona isn't availing herself for intimacy.
"Please?"
Fiona gets on the bed, fluffs the pillows and prepares to share the bed with her wife.
Alaya dries her hands and goes to the box. She unlocks it and pulls out the device putting it on Fiona's lap. "Wait." Alaya then places the box of strips on the side table. She sits next to her wife and places the first strip in the device.
"Hi mothers I just arrived. Here is my dorm room ..."
Alaya explains how to use the device to her wife.
"Why have I not seen this before?" Fiona hands are shaking with anger and whispers. "You withheld from me." She places the device on the bed and gets up. "What is this?" She points to the device.
"Is my journal I kept at NNYU."
Fiona tears start to flow and her two hands turn into fists of anger.
"I wanted you to see it, but ..." Alaya opens her arms in open honesty. "But ... my sweet Fiona. Life truly got in the way. My mothers haven't seen it until today."
"Why today?"
"Because they asked."
Fiona's face instantly becomes red and her eyes bulge. "No." She shakes her head. "No, this is not happening. You can't hold information back like your mothers. Our children can't ... we must ... Ahh! Alaya!" Fiona puts her hands on the door knob.
"Please Fiona listen to me. Allow me to explain."
Fiona freezes and drops to the floor sobbing. "How can you explain keeping something so important from me?"
Alaya runs to her wife and picks her up. "I am sorry. So sorry."
Fiona cries into her wife's chest, "Why must there be secrets? Why? Is this power you seek over your me to keep me ignorant? What of our children? Will you keep them suppressed until they have proven themselves?"
"No. No. No." Alaya shakes her head and pulls her wife close, "This is my mistake. I came home from NNYU and needed to rest. I was gone for six years. Six years!" She takes a deep breath to quiet her tone, "To my mothers and I were strangers. We were lost trying to fix the discrepancy of emotional void. We were loving and kind. They were too scared to know how much they missed and I ... I was too terrified to show them my lonely life. Then you came along and it was an excuse to just ignore the past and focus on the future."
"I can't the a catalyst for your family." Fiona looks up to her wife with bloodshot eyes, "It has taken too much out of me."
"It was never deceitfulness. My past became irrelevant. Soon I forgot about it like a book read many years ago. Today, for the first time my parents asks about me." Alaya attempts a smile, "Me! They wanted to know about me and NNYU. It has always been about my today or tomorrow, never been about my six years alone. Today they asked."
"Fiona how did you answer?"
"I showed them." Alaya moves towards the bed holding her wife tight. "Do you want to see me?"
Fiona gets quiet.
"I want you as a partner in life, to share my life ... I want to be supportive to you. I am willing to offer you everything, but not lose myself in the transaction. I expect the same from you ... I will not let you lose yourself. I need you whole. I want you whole."
Fiona lays her head on her wife's chest and meekly replies, "Will you stay nearby?"
Alaya nods yes and places her on the bed in the sitting position. "Would you like something to drink?"
Fiona smiles and shakes her head. "Yes, please I would like water."
Alaya looks at her wife inquisitively. 'There is whiskey ready to be dispensed.' She refills Fiona's glass and brings it over. "Do you have any questions on how to use this?"
Fiona shakes her head no and watches her wife move across the room and clean the dishes as she starts the video.
"Hi mothers I just arrived. Here is my dorm room ..."
Fiona feels every gambit of emption as she watches the brief journal updates of her wife's six year journey.
She laugh when Alaya shares getting on a moving pavement for the first time, trying to learn how to drive and her first case with her internship dealing with a lost pet goose.
Fiona has anxiety when Alaya talks about trying out for track and field, watching to see if the egg cracked in her class project and waiting for the results of her dissertation submission.
She feels stress as Alaya attempts to finish her papers on time, grading papers late at night and lack of sleep during finals.
She is angry meeting that selfish Silvia and jealousy seeing Daniela.
Fiona has tears running down her face as Alaya cries of missing her mothers, her home, felling isolated and lonely.
When there aren't any more videos to watch Fiona looks over to her humble wife. "I don't believe I want to watch them ever again. You were so amazing. I can't imagine."
"You miss your mother."
"I do, but I am not alone."
"My mothers want to see them again. I told them once is enough.'
"I can see why they want to see this again. It is their daughter. I would have never seen your life like this. Unless we went to University together."
"I think it is terrible that you couldn't make friends with other Silurians. Who cares if they might be family."
Alaya pops up out of the chair and goes through the tabs looking for that specific video. She places it in the slot, fast forward and stop. "Look here."
Fiona look and at once has a shocked face. "Can we get closer?"
Alaya manipulates the video as she has done with her mothers. It is now obvious to Fiona she is looking at future family member, "That hair, that face ... that could be a family member! She loves cricket! What is her name?"
Alaya zooms in and stops.
Fiona smiles reading the name tag, "That could be our great great great great great granddaughter."
"I am sorry but that is all I have in my video journal. I hope you weren't too disappointed."
"No. I am not. Thank you for sharing." Fiona flops back, "Atlas, I am now officially drained."
Alaya puts everything back into the box and locks it tight. "I will let you sleep. Besides I have to work in a few hours."
"Please stay, just for a bit. Let me fall asleep with you next to me."
Alaya nods and comes to her wife's side. She holds her wife until she falls asleep.
Before Alaya leaves she decides to write a note. She bring the messenger cylinder to the light and opens. A note pops out. Alaya opens it thinking it the last one she wrote her wife. Instead it is in Fiona's handwriting.
What do you think of the names April and Jennifer?
Alaya looks at the note, she looks around the room. Louisa changing her schedule, whiskey hardly touched and upset about their children's future. She quietly returns the note to the cylinder and places it back its original location.
Alaya then goes to her sleeping wife and taps her on the nose. She whispers, "I have to go to work. Ring the bell if you need me."
Fiona sits up, "Do you need to go?"
"I do."
Fiona grabs her wife's arm, "I love you."
Alaya leans down and whispers in Fiona's ear, "I love you Fiona. I am going to be ... me. I will not beg ever again." She kisses her wife and hold back from kissing her wife's stomach.
Alaya leaves the small loft and heads to 15 Savile Row. 'I think our daughters being named April and Jennifer is brilliant!'
Alaya walks in the drawing-room where Vastra is ready to go out. Alaya lays out a map, "I have marked the ten possible locations. We will go together to look at the these five tonight. Tomorrow these five."
"Why don't we just do all ten tonight?"
"Because we have wives that need us home. Five today and five tomorrow."
Vastra nods in agreement, "May I ask how dinner went?"
"After we work." Alaya hands her mother five folders, "Here are the five locations we are going to scope tonight. We can go over them as we drive."
Vastra smiles at her daughter.
Alaya smiles back, "We have work to do. Let's go."
Alaya and Vastra put on their heavy black capes and drive off to destination one not as Mother and Daughter, but for the first time as partners.