The Taguel Tradition

by signelchan

or, How Panne Changed Yarne's Life, For Better or Worse. The year of the rabbit is an important time for the taguel culture, which is unfortunately a single-digit number of people. That being said, Panne takes the year very seriously and makes sure that she gets her son taking it seriously too. This has far-reaching consequences that she fully anticipated. [Modern AU]

8. Sharing Secrets

That weekend, whether they wanted it or not, was the perfect opportunity to tell the others they were dreading to talk to about things. It hadn't been planned that way, and if it had it would have been done with a bit more care and intentionality, but it was how things fell in place and it saved a lot of stressing about having to force a meeting with two people they didn't particularly care for interacting with. The problem, though, was that the opportunity reared its head while they were already in the middle of something just as important, and forced their hands (especially Kjelle's) in making a decision that was harder than it needed to be at any point.

It started early Sunday afternoon, when Kjelle had gotten messaged asking if some friends could pop by for a quick conversation. She'd been more than happy to let those specific friends come over, and after assuring Yarne that it was just going to be Lucina and Cynthia coming in for a bit, he was on board with the idea as well. So when it wasn't just those two, but Gerome as well, showing up at their front door half an hour later, Yarne was immediately suspicious that something hadn't been told to him to get him to agree to things, and it took Kjelle showing him the exact messages she'd received to prove that he hadn't been lied to by her, and that she was in the dark about the third person's arrival as well.

"If they didn't think I needed to know he was coming, then I wonder if he tagged along without them expecting it?" she suggested, going to open the door while Yarne watched the trio outside through the window, seeing how they all looked like they were awkwardly waiting around for something.

"Look, before you ask anything about why Gerome's with us, I'll explain," Lucina said as soon as the door started opening, knowing that the question was coming. "Just let us come inside first, I don't want to be stuck out here explaining this to the world."

"Okay, sure," Kjelle replied, opening the door enough for the three to come inside, now standing around in a half-circle in the main room once they were all past the threshold. As she closed and locked the door, she continued, "Go on, start explaining. We're both waiting."

Looking back over her shoulder to see Yarne giving her a small wave, Lucina took in a deep breath and turned around again to face Kjelle, exhaling slowly as she chose the words to say. "I'm not sure where to start, so I'll just pick somewhere and we'll go from there. We're moving for six months starting next week. There, that's a good place to drum up conversation from, I think."

"Who's 'we' here, all three of you?" Her head tilting to one side as she glanced between the trio, Kjelle saw that Cynthia was doing a lot of pointing toward the other two, shaking her head rapidly in order to get that accusation off of her back. "The two of them? But…why?"

Lucina seemed to tense up a little as she reached over and grabbed one of Gerome's arms, sliding her hand down until she was interlacing her fingers within his, him completely stone-faced at the act. "This was something we intended on keeping private for as long as we could, but we've been casually seeing each other for a couple years now, and right as we began to take it more seriously, something…happened. Something that requires us moving for a little while."

"My parents, they're going on a long trip back to Mother's homeland and need someone to watch their house while they're gone." When Gerome spoke, no matter what he was talking about, he sounded bored and slightly aggressive, but this time he seemed to be trying his best to sound softer around the edges. "I planned on going by myself to handle things, but Lucina decided that she could spare the time away from her job to come with."

"More like, I asked if we can make my position temporarily remote so I could assist family and they were fine with it, but I suppose making it sound like I'm quitting to chase you to a different country makes it sound more romantic." A small smile appearing on Lucina's lips, she looked at Kjelle and gave a nod. "So, there you have it. You two, and Cynthia and Inigo, haven't actually been the only two couples in our group for a while, but it's almost like you are going to be for the next six months."

Behind them all, Yarne's eyes were wide as he was counting on his fingers, several grim realizations hitting him as he tried his best to get his girlfriend's attention, but she was more engrossed in what she'd just learned than anything else. "That's definitely a lot to throw at me," Kjelle said with a chuckle, leaning back against the wall behind her. "Explains why Gerome's here, I suppose, but then it doesn't explain why Cynthia's here too."

"Oh, me? I'm here because Lucina was telling me this earlier and then we wanted to come tell you, since Inigo would be home soon and I don't want him hearing about this and thinking that he can try the same thing with his parents." Shaking her head again, Cynthia rolled her eyes and added, "I love him, I really do, but he gets it in his head that if someone else is doing something, he's got to do it to, and I don't want to have to go housesitting somewhere that I'm not familiar with. I like my life here too much for that."

"Right, that makes perfect sense."

"You're taking this as well as we expected you would," Lucina told her, letting go of Gerome's hand to put both of her own hands together in front of her chest, "which means that you'll hopefully take this part well too. We'd like for you to come visit while we're gone, just so that you can say you've been outside of Ylisse for longer than a day."

"I don't know if that's a good idea," Yarne blurted out, hearing that and holding his hands up over his head, six fingers held high for everyone to see. He'd only expected for it to be Kjelle to see the fingers, so when everyone else turned around he was kind of stuck in his pose without any safe explanation. "H-hey, why are you all looking at me? I just don't know if it's a good idea to be traveling like that, that's all."

Her jaw dropping as she also made the same connection that Yarne had, Kjelle knew she needed to think fast on her feet before any conclusions were drawn by the others. "Yeah, I know, the timing's going to be kind of tricky with all of that going on, but I'm sure your mother would understand if you weren't here for a little bit of that time. It's not like you're intending on spending that much time with her, after all."

"That's right, I heard about all that from my parents, I just can't imagine having a little sibling that much younger than me," Cynthia said with a shudder, picking up on what it was that had been said without it actually being said. "But don't worry, if you don't want to go because of that baby or your mom or whatever, I can totally go with Kjelle and we can make it a girls' trip! Wouldn't that be fun?"

"Definitely, I'd be fine with that if that's what we ended up doing," Kjelle replied, trying not to sound like she was hiding something else. In fact, when the eyes all turned back to her, she was standing in the same pose and position she'd been in before, everyone unaware of how shocked she'd been to see what Yarne had almost accidentally spoiled for everyone. "We'll have to plan something out in the future, whenever we know what's going to be happening and all that."

"I like that idea!" Clapping excitedly, Cynthia turned to Lucina and Gerome, giving them both a huge smile. "So, you're either going to just get two of us, or you're going to get all three of us, but either way you're definitely going to be getting visitors while you're gone!"

"I'm thankful for that," Lucina said, bowing her head to show her thanks. "I'm already dreading telling my parents about this, they're going to insist on coming to visit as well but I don't know how great of an idea that would be, especially since them coming would mean Morgan coming and I…I'm kind of looking forward to getting away from him, even for a little bit. Is that rude of me to think?"

Before there were any chances to answer, Kjelle's phone started ringing where she'd left it last, a blaring ringtone that made her start to pale when she heard it. "Why is one of them calling me right now?" she asked under her breath, apologizing to her friends and unexpected guest as she went to answer the call, stepping into the bedroom with the door closed to handle it.

That left Yarne, still shaken from what he'd almost ruined, to entertain the three people currently still in his house. "I didn't even know that your parents lived in a different country," he admitted, looking at Gerome as he said it. "I knew Inigo's did, but I didn't know about yours. Where do they live?"

"Ferox, not too far from where Inigo's family is, actually. Big part of why I would prefer him not knowing about this." Gerome sighed, almost like the explanation had annoyed him. "Mother had wanted to live in Valm, Father in Plegia, and they decided to pick based on a random selection and ended up with Ferox as their destination. It's not that far from the border, but still far enough that we can't reasonably stay here while housesitting for them."

"It's a lovely area, rolling hills unlike most of the rest of the country," Cynthia chimed in, despite it not being about where her family lived. "I've been around there visiting Inigo's parents before, so I'm gonna guess it's pretty much the same in that whole part of the country, but you totally correct me if I'm wrong."

Gerome gave a stern shake of his head. "Nope, you're correct. Good job explaining the topography for me before I had to."

Inside the bedroom, they all heard what sounded like something hitting the wall, and at the sound Lucina took a step toward the door. "I think we should get going, doesn't sound like the conversation Kjelle got roped into is going too well. Thanks for letting us come by and clear the air on things, Yarne!" She sounded so genuine in her thanks that he gave a laugh as a response and didn't know what else to say, leaving her to follow up with, "Let KT—uh, sorry, Kjelle—know that we would've stuck around but we didn't want to waste all day doing that!" He laughed again as Lucina lead the charge out, and soon enough they were all gone and he was able to go check on Kjelle without worrying about anyone hearing what was being said.

When he went to open the bedroom door, she opened it on the other side, her face having reddened from anger during her phone call. "We're going to meet with my parents, right now," she snapped, him looking at her with surprise to hear it. "I'm sure you can guess why we're going, but I'm not excited about doing this. Did everyone else leave?"

"Yeah, they could hear it getting heated in there and didn't want to spend all day waiting around. Is everything okay? You're usually not this insistent on seeing your parents." Yarne was completely aware why they were going over, because Kjelle had finally snapped and was going to tell them what was going on, but if she was acting in anger then things were only going to go poorly. "Do you want to calm down before we leave?"

"No, I want to go right now. I'm not even going to bother telling you why we're going, it's stupid and you're going to hear all about it when we get there." She was already in the process of sliding her shoes on, leaving him speechless as she grabbed her own car keys and went out the front door around him. He didn't want to go, but he knew that he didn't have a choice in the matter at that point and needed to be present to make sure things didn't get as bad as they seemed to be headed.

True to her word, Kjelle didn't explain a thing on their drive over to her parents' house, a trip that took them on the complete opposite side of town from where Yarne's parents lived, to a neighborhood that was filled with older houses that were built long before they'd been born. Their destination was a house that looked relatively restored on the outside, but the tarp-covered pallets outside showed that there were renovations taking place somewhere on the property. She threw the car into park outside and got out of the car in a huff, Yarne following her just to make sure that she didn't enter the house in a bad mood, and to try and smooth things over as best as he could, he gave her a tight hug before they made it up to the front door. "Please, at least try to keep calm in there," he whispered to her, feeling her trying to squirm out of his grasp. "Kjelle, seriously, don't do anything reckless while we're here."

"I'll be as calm as they let me be, I'm only acting based on how they're acting with me." She finally pulled herself out of his arms and went to the door, typing in a code on the keypad on the handle and listening for it to unlock, then opening the door and walking inside without so much as a knock. By the time Yarne had followed her in, he could already hear the surprise in two voices at her presence, one of them a lot friendlier-sounding than the other.

"Did you bring Yarne with you?" he heard from somewhere in the mess of construction work that was taking place on the main floor of the house, while he was in the process of figuring out how to re-lock the door behind him. There were fast, strong footsteps on bare wood floors before he heard a laugh, followed by, "You sure did! Great to see you over here for the first time in forever, boy!"

He stood up tall, uncomfortable that he hadn't locked the door but also admitting defeat at the complicated lock that wouldn't stay in the correct position without a code. Without turning around to face who was addressing him, he replied, "Thank you for the warm welcome, Mrs. Kjelle's mom, but uh, I can't lock the door."

"You know you don't have to be so damn uptight and formal with me," Sully told him, coming over to the door with her footsteps just as powerful as they'd been entering the room, motioning for him to step aside so that she could take care of fixing the lock. "The code's the same it's always been. Don't tell me you've forgotten it."

"I…forgot the code, yeah." Looking away so that he wasn't watching her work, Yarne felt somewhat embarrassed that he was expected to remember the code he'd been told every single time he'd ever come into the house, but in his defense, he knew the first two numbers, it was the rest of the code that wasn't sticking in his mind. But he didn't have time to dwell on that, especially after she'd triggered the lock and let him test the handle to make sure that it was indeed locked. Now he was stuck inside with them, and there was no getting out because he still didn't know the code. "So, um, when she came in, was Kjelle still angry about things or…?"

There was a moment of silence, then the sound of something crashing somewhere else in the house. "She was, and she still is. You want to tell me what the hell is going on, or should I go ask her myself?"

"I think it'd be best to hear it from her, honestly." Yarne wasn't sure if he'd be able to do the whole story justice, and he looked down at Kjelle's (not quite as short as her) mother, a sheepish smile on his face. "She's been preparing herself for talking to you about it. She's also worried you're not going to take it well, just as a warning."

Slowly nodding as she mentally processed that statement, Sully decided to heed his words and headed back into the other part of the house, but not before giving Yarne a strong pat on the back. "Well, thanks for that warning, and it's good to see you like always. Make yourself comfortable somewhere, hopefully we'll be able to do something after we get all of that girl's anger sorted out. I've got no idea where she gets that hotheadedness from, let me tell you."

Everything felt so tense and awkward that Yarne didn't say anything in return, just heading deeper into the house until he found a room that was mostly usable, the den area of the house that had already had its remodeling finished years before. He found a chair to sit in, reached into his pocket and pulled out the game he'd snuck in with him, and started playing, figuring that things would settle down and they'd be able to actually interact like proper humans soon enough. His hopes were severely misguided, however, based on the yelling he heard at the same time his game properly turned on. From what he could hear, something had been said that had every voice in the conversation going at full volume, followed by more smashing and crashing. It went on for several minutes, which he tried to drown out with the sounds of his game, but there was no masking the level of animosity that was being reached with how hard everyone was yelling.

Suddenly, right as Yarne was beginning to squirm in his seat, the yelling reached its loudest point, before going silent after an impassioned yell of "Kjelle Tatjana, don't you dare!" just to be followed with the sounds of angered feet charging through the house, then up the stairs before they were muffled by carpet acting as insulation. A few moments later, the same thing happened again, this time a lot louder and heavier with every step, until up on the second floor there was the sound of a door slamming closed. That was followed by the third set of steps, much less angered in their sound, coming closer to where Yarne was until he heard a knock on the wall by the entrance to the room. "I see what you meant by it being best to hear it from you," he heard Sully say, as she came into the room and sat in another seat across the way. "That's…well, I'm not going to say anything about that right now. Mind if I just sit here and think about how I want to respond to it? To you, specifically."

He didn't look up from his game, but his stomach was sinking as far as it could possibly go, his heart beginning to pound in his chest, and he said, "I don't think I have much of a choice in what you do in your house, Mrs. Kjelle's mom, so if you want to talk to me about it when you have your words, then I'll talk to you about it." He couldn't help but notice that she wasn't responding in any way to what he'd said, not even making a sound to let him know he'd been heard, which told him that she was deep in thought about what she wanted to tell him, and that only made him even more anxious for what was to come.

Upstairs, Kjelle stood in her childhood bedroom, her whole body shaking in anger and frustration as she knew that she wasn't alone in the room; she'd retreated upstairs for one reason in particular and she wasn't going to let being chased stop her from it. "I already told you, I want my book and then I'm leaving," she seethed, pushing through items that had been stored in the room, not caring if she toppled anything over into the faded posters of the bands she'd loved while in school and flags splashed in pinks and purples as she tried to get to her closet. "You know what I wanted you to know, you took it exactly like I expected you to which hurt because Mom took it so much better, now can we be done?"

The person she was speaking to didn't say a word, muttering things under his breath but not whole words or phrases until he raised his voice enough to be properly heard. "You're bein' kind of ridiculous about this, don't ya think? There's nothing to make this reasonable."

"Me? Ridiculous? Never." To punctuate her last word, Kjelle intentionally chose to shove over a wooden support for some piece of furniture that had been rehoused in her room, it falling into surrounding items with a loud thud. "I know I told you that too, I'm making it very clear that you're not getting to keep playing your games with me, not anymore."

When she got to the closet and slid it open, she was met with a collection of meticulously-labeled boxes that contained everything she cared about that she hadn't wanted to take with her when she'd moved out, almost exclusively trinkets from her school years. It was when she didn't see the particular box she was looking for at her own level, and had to crane her neck to see that it was at the top of the stack, that she realized how sticky of a situation she'd created for herself. Right as she decided her course of action for getting that topmost box down, she felt a hand touch her shoulder, which she immediately reached back to try and remove. "You're not climbin' that, if you're really tryin' to get what I think you're tryin' to get," Vaike said, tightening his grip so that there was less of a chance of his hand being pried off. "I'll help ya, if you'll give me that much."

"Huh, suddenly you want to help me with things, what a concept," Kjelle muttered, still trying to get her father's hand off of her but knowing that she was fighting a losing battle, no matter how strong she was. "Whatever, I guess I can give you this one. Probably for the best that I don't hurt myself getting it down, anyway."

She stepped aside and let him get up closer to the boxes in the closet, and while he couldn't exactly reach up and pull the top box down without needing to get the one under it as well (although Yarne would have been able to, but he was downstairs and needed to stay there), the box was carefully removed and Kjelle was able to get into it and grab a single book from inside of it. While she was searching for that book, though, her father was watching her, trying to come up with what he wanted to say to her while he had her somewhere she had to listen to him. "Look, I know you're all angry and upset and all that, but can't we talk things out? I don't want ya leavin' here today like this, it's not gonna do anything for any of us except make people more upset."

"If I wanted to clear the air between us, I'd be trying to do it already." Her voice was barely a grumble, but Kjelle was angry enough that she didn't want to say more than she needed to, and she knew that getting too heated would only end badly for her. "As you can see, I don't care enough to want to make things better. I don't really care how you feel after I leave here today, honestly."

Slowly nodding, each of his daughter's words acting like a knife that was digging itself deeper into his side, Vaike seemed to be thinking about what he needed to say in order to change her mind. "Right, well, that's…uh, I'm not really sure how I'm supposed t'be taking that, if I'm bein' honest. That's not really the way you should be…talkin' to either of your parents, don't you think?"

"Did you really just use that line of logic with me?" Coming up from the box with a large book of pictures in her hand, Kjelle seemed even more annoyed than she had been previously been, and she kicked the box aside to try and get back over to the door. "Funny how you want to suddenly step up and pretend like you've ever cared about being a parent to me, just because I got upset with you about…well, you know what I'm upset with you about. I don't need to tell you again."

"Yeah, see, that's the problem here, because I don't know what you're upset about." Using his body to block the only clear path through the room, Vaike looked at Kjelle and how absolutely venomous her stare back at him was. "Well, it's true. I've been goin' over the conversation in my head since it happened, and you gettin' so upset doesn't make any sense to me, and I bet it's the same for your mom. You just kinda…went off the handle after we weren't upset about what you came over to tell us."

She narrowed her eyes as far as she could without closing them, staring straight into her father's face with the desire to knock him out of the way like she had so many items to cross the room, but when she saw how genuine his confusion was, she softened her own stance a little. "Okay, so you really don't know why I'm upset?" she asked to clarify, watching as he gave a single nod. "Gods, you're the densest person I've ever met and I'm ashamed to be related to you."

"Then explain yourself, maybe?" he asked, trying not to make it clear that those particular words had come as a complete shock to hear. "I'm just tryin' to understand why this is what it's comin' to, all of this hatred and stuff like that."

The resulting scream was heard clearly downstairs, Yarne's grasp on his game getting a bit tighter when he heard it. He didn't know what was going on up there, but he could gather that whatever it was, Kjelle was unhappy with it. "Sounds like she's getting her frustrations out, that's for the best," Sully said once they couldn't hear the screaming any longer, sighing after she spoke. "Sometimes I wish I understood what was going on in that head of hers, but she's never been the best at expressing those thoughts. Not like I've ever been the best at listening to her try, but is anyone, really?"

"I don't know, my mom's never been good at listening to me either," Yarne replied, deciding that he didn't want to risk breaking his game and closing it now that there was talking again in the room. "But I've never, ever heard her get that loud before. Should I go up and check on her?"

"Don't bother with it, if she's anything like me she'll use that anger to get right to the point of solving things. Which I'm sure she's in the middle of now." Chuckling, Sully looked over to Yarne and opened her mouth to say something else, seemed to think twice about it, then looked elsewhere in the room to speak. "I've done my thinking, by the way, and I've just got one thing I want to say to you about…what's going on. About my daughter coming into my house and telling me that she's pregnant like she did."

She sounded surprisingly calm with those words, which gave Yarne hope that he wasn't about to be completely verbally demolished by a woman upset beyond explanation with him. "Y-yeah? What do you want to say to me about that?" he asked, trying not to sound as terrified as he felt about things.

"I don't know what you did to make the impossible happen, but damn it, you managed it, and I really couldn't be happier." She certainly didn't sound all that happy, but when Yarne tepidly glanced over at Sully he could see that she was smiling even though she was looking in a different direction. "When she was a kid, Kjelle didn't care a thing about dolls, didn't want to play house or any of that kind of 'typical' girly stuff, which I think might've made her learning she wasn't going to be able to have kids of her own hurt a little less, but it still hurt her. We all knew it did, and it hurt us too. To see her going through that heartbreak without any choice in the matter, it was hell on all of us. And now…" She let her smile grow a tad bigger. "Now she's going to get to be the mother she used to dream of getting to be."

Yarne's whole body relaxed at hearing that, knowing that at least one of Kjelle's parents was okay with what was happening. "I get it, I don't know what we did either but we've gone from knowing we'd never have the chance to have a baby of our own to, uh, having the chance, and it's kind of hard to wrap our heads around it. But she's excited, I'm excited, and everything feels like it's going better than it should be for us, all things considered."

His sentence was punctuated with another scream from upstairs, which made him feel like maybe he was being a bit more positive than he should have been being. That second scream wasn't a sign of anything going wrong, though, because it was merely Kjelle attempt to push through her father's roadblock a second time by screaming up into his face, something that Vaike did not appreciate but didn't flinch from. "C'mon, Kjelle, you know better than this," he reminded her, trying to keep his calm as he spoke. "Use your words to tell me what you want, don't start screamin' at me like that."

"I want you to move, damn it!" she yelled, lunging forward but stopping herself before she made any contact whatsoever with him. That was when he reached in front of himself and put his hand on her head, holding her right in place. "Dad, seriously, I don't want to have to deal with you! You've made it very clear that nothing I do matters to you, so why are you being so insistent to keep me trapped here?"

What she said clearly took Vaike by surprise, as he immediately pulled his hand back, watching as Kjelle stood back up properly and looked at him with that venomous glare once again. "What d'ya mean, nothing you do matters to me? You've always been the most important thing in my life since you were…well, since you were just a dream that I didn't ever think would come true, and you wanna tell me that nothing you do matters to me?"

"If I mattered to you, then the first words out of your mouth after I told you I'm pregnant wouldn't have been about your stupid home renovations! It would've been about me!" Tears were beginning to form in the corners of Kjelle's eyes, the root of her frustrations bubbling to the surface as she kept glaring at her father. "Mom at least had it right in being surprised and asking if I was sure, but you? You went straight to talking about needing to finish fixing this place up. Do you know how upsetting that is?"

"It was the first thing I thought of," Vaike admitted, "because I just thought about how dangerous it'd be for anyone small roamin' around this house like it is. I didn't know that you'd get that hurt by me considerin' someone's safety."

Gritting her teeth together, Kjelle forced a horribly fake smile onto her face, one that radiated how much she disagreed with what she just heard. "Oh, of course, you were considering someone's safety, I definitely would've thought about it like that after you've been working on fixing this place for ten years. My safety clearly didn't matter all that much to you, so I'm glad it's different now."

"Why're you talkin' like that, of course it's different now! You were pretty grown when we started all this, it's not like you didn't know to avoid the danger and all that!"

"Pretty grown, huh?" Speaking through her still-grit teeth, Kjelle reached up with her free hand and wiped a tear away from one of her eyes, flicking it down at the floor under her feet. "But not grown enough to not need parents to support her sometimes, but that didn't matter back then, did it? What mattered was the grand plan you guys had for this place, and working on it no matter what the cost was."

His eyes widening, then shifting down as he realized what was happening, Vaike started a few words before sighing in acceptance. "Ah, I get it now. You're all upset about the fact that fixin' this place took priority sometimes over—"

"Sometimes?" Bellowing, whether she meant to or not, it seemed that the metaphorical gloves had come off in how Kjelle was going to deal with her hurt feelings, and she made it clear with how spiteful every sentence she made sounded. "I couldn't do anything outside of what school and sports asked of me, no hanging out with friends and no other fun things. I wanted to be like the people I went to school with, getting a job and going out on weekends and all that, and you always shot me down because we couldn't afford it, because every hour and every dollar was going into redoing the house."

"—you're really gonna go through all this now?"

"Hell yeah I am, I've been holding onto this for ten years and I'm over it!" Setting her photo book down on a piece of furniture resting on its side, Kjelle brought her hands in front of her and began counting things out on her fingers, each addition to her story another number in her count. "You always made it sound like me doing all of my sports was a burden on you guys, even though it was your decision to make me do every single one of them. I was more than happy to just play on school teams, but nope, you guys shipped me off to different league teams just to keep me out of the house where it was 'too dangerous' for me to be while you were working. But, of course, those things cost money and you'd blame me for that, even though I didn't ask to do any of it, and when I offered to work to take care of those costs you shot me down because you wanted me to focus on my school and my sports."

She waggled one of her fingers in her father's direction, him taking a step back to get away from her and give her a little space, in case she was ready to just leave the room. That would have been the easy way out, and she was clearly getting things off of her shoulders she'd been bearing for too long. "Then, because of your simply amazing parenting choices, I was able to receive almost complete scholarships to all sorts of colleges across the world, and what happened there? Do you remember?"

"You didn't…get to go to any of them," Vaike answered, the words catching in his throat. "But that wasn't our fault, it was—"

"Growing up, all I heard about was how you had worked on saving up so, so much money for me to go to school wherever I wanted without needing to worry about it," Kjelle continued, the tears in her eyes having started streaming down her cheeks. "But when I needed just a little to get me out of this place and off to a school that was paying for everything except the first semester, you had to tell me that the money didn't exist. And it didn't exist because…?"

"—because we'd needed to use it for fixin' the house, I know."

"Because the house was more important than your daughter getting to live the life you'd been pushing her towards for as long as she could walk and run." Turning her head to look back at the still-open closet and the boxes still inside, Kjelle could see, with her tear-stained vision, the boxes labeled with the different sport names that she'd acquired trophies and uniforms and equipment for over the years. When she faced her father once more, she was less angry in how she looked and simply more upset. "I didn't get to do anything that normal girls got to do, thanks to your focus on making this house the best place you could. I should have dresses hanging in that closet, Dad. I should have collections of pictures from school dances and from birthday parties and from everything that I didn't get because I wasn't able to have the life of a normal teenage girl thanks to this place."

"H-hey now, you got to go to one of those dances, you can't tell me you didn't get t'do that." He was looking behind her into the closet at that point, searching and scanning for any sight of a dress that would fit the occasion, but when he didn't find one he grimaced.

"You're so right, I did get to go to a single dance, because of friends helping me pay for my ticket—since you couldn't spare the money and I wasn't allowed to get a job—and then another friend let me borrow a dress of hers that was way too big, but it was that or nothing." Swallowing down something else, Kjelle seemed like she was just about at the end of her venting, but then she added one last thing. "So I think that you still focusing on this place as being the most important thing is yet another reminder that I've never been the priority, and I hope that you will someday realize how badly that's screwed up our relationship." She reached back over and grabbed her photo album again, then without another word ran out of the room as best as she could given its cluttered state, expecting to be followed but never hearing the footsteps coming after her.

By the time she was downstairs and in the doorway of the room that her mother and Yarne were still sitting and quietly talking in, she was fully lost in her crying, unable to explain a thing about what was upsetting her but clearly going through something. "Thanks for keeping me company in all this, Mrs. Kjelle's mom," Yarne said abruptly, standing up from his seat and rushing to be with his girlfriend, "but I think we're going to go so that she can get home and calm down." He had been fine with where their conversation had gone, but it had begun drifting toward talking about his mom and combining talking about her with the high emotional level in the house had started to make him uncomfortable; it wasn't so much that Kjelle being back and crying was a perfect excuse to leave for that reason, but it definitely was making getting out of there a lot easier than it would have been otherwise.

"No problem, thanks for being a good sport about all of what we talked about," Sully replied, the realization that it was just her daughter that had come downstairs hitting her at about the same time that both Kjelle and Yarne were on their way out the door. She didn't even make sure that the door had been re-locked before she was going upstairs to see what had happened, the good spirits she'd been able to create in her lighthearted conversation with Yarne disappearing when she got to that former bedroom's door and heard the undeniable sounds of someone sobbing on the other side.

Due to how hard she was still crying even though they were no longer in the house, the process of them leaving was stopped once they were inside the car, Kjelle unable to bring herself to drive and Yarne not wanting to mess with the seat or anything that was set up for his girlfriend. "Whenever you're ready to talk, I'm ready to listen," he assured her, looking at the cover of the photo album that had left the house with them. "Whether it's about this here, or whatever happened upstairs, I want to hear about it when you want to talk."

She choked out a bunch of sounds that were meant to be words but went nowhere, before a single thought was coherent enough to be understood. "I went off on my dad and I don't even know why I did it like that," she cried, burying her face in her arms against the steering wheel of the car. "He's going to hate me for it, I know it."

"I've gone off on Mom enough times to know that you just have to come back and apologize later to make it all better." That wasn't advice that Yarne actually believed in, because he'd gone through that cycle with his mother so many times that it felt like it never actually did get better. "Besides, I'm sure he's going to understand that you're…probably more emotional than usual, with everything else going on."

"He made me telling him about the baby into something about finishing the house remodel. As if everything he's done in the past ten years hasn't been about that exact same thing. Because he couldn't just…he…" With that, Kjelle was back to crying harder than she could control, and Yarne was left trying to awkwardly comfort her enough to get them on the road back home, without wanting to make things worse by talking about how positive his conversation with her mother had been.

Eventually they were able to leave, and the drive home was rough if only because Kjelle kept having to blink away tears that kept cropping back up. When her phone started ringing in between them, she had to tell him to not answer it, even though he could see that it was her mother calling and she'd done nothing wrong in all of that. "I don't want her to tell me that I hurt his feelings. He hurt mine first, why should I care?"

"You should care because…" Yarne trailed off as he tried coming up with a reason for why that was necessary, but when he found that there just wasn't a good one right then, he decided to drop the point and go ahead and ignore the call. The phone did eventually stop ringing, but a couple of minutes later it played a notification to tell them there was a voicemail that had been left, something that they both had seen coming given why the phone had been ringing to begin with.

Rather than just ignore that notification and pretend she never saw it, Kjelle let the voicemail play once they were parked outside of their house, her phone on speaker while she held it in one hand, her other hand holding one of Yarne's. "There have been a lot of dumb things that have taken place under this roof," Sully started in her message, which had Kjelle hovering her finger over the delete button before it even got any further, only to let it rest when the message continued, "but what happened here wasn't dumb on your part. I know that you're frustrated with how things have gone here in the past, but starting now we're going to do better for your sake. I know, too little too late, and you're probably rolling your eyes that I'm even saying things are going to change, but…"

"I didn't know that I'd hurt you that deeply all this time, that's a real bad parent thing for me to have been doin', and you were completely right to call me out on it," Vaike added, sounding more despondent and upset than Yarne could ever recall hearing him, but Kjelle didn't seem the slightest bit fazed at her father showing emotion in his voice.

"Point is, we're not letting this keep going. You haven't deserved half the hell we've put you through, and as we've been sitting here talking about it, we've realized that every 'nice' thing we've done for you, it probably hasn't felt like it's genuine or actually nice at all. You'd brought up how we reacted at you wrecking the car we'd given you, and that's just enough reason why we've been pretty pathetic as your parents. It's never been about you, it's been about us, and that stops now." There was a pause, probably coming from Sully looking at how long the message had already been going and knowing that she didn't have forever to wrap things up. "We're looking forward to when you give us a chance to make things a bit better for you. Both of us are. We can't change the kind of parents we've been to you, but we can start fresh with that grandbaby you're giving us."

The message ended there, and Kjelle dropped her phone into her lap as it started giving her the options for what to do with that message. "Oh gods, they're going to be grandparents," she groaned, leaning back into her seat, "and they're going to treat our kid better than they treated me. What kind of stupid nonsense is that?"

"At least they want to do better?" Yarne pointed out, knowing that he'd never hear his mom make that sort of concession to him. "I think that's a pretty big deal."

"It is, it is, but…ugh, I don't want to think about this right now. Let's just go inside and pretend none of this happened." She squinted her eyes, almost like she was bracing for some impact. "All of this crying and showing emotion and being upset has given me a headache."

---

Just about two weeks later, a last-minute plan was put together to wish Lucina and Gerome farewell before they headed off to their new home for the next half-year. Yarne only heard about it from Kjelle when he got home from work that day, him mentally ready to get to his normal routine but her standing in the doorway of the bedroom, one hand on her hip and the other holding out her phone to show him what she'd received. "I know, Fridays are your special day for games, but this one's a pretty big deal," she told him, as he read what was presented on the screen. "I'm not going to say no to seeing them one more time before they leave for a while."

"We just saw them earlier this week, though? Can't you count that as the last time you see them before they go?" He was referring to how they'd gone out to dinner with Cynthia and Inigo for her birthday that Monday night, with Lucina and Gerome both showing up separately mid-meal to come celebrate as well. "I don't know if we can exactly afford two dinners in one week, with everything else going on."

"This one's already paid for, I checked." Smiling at him as she recalled her phone and held it behind her, Kjelle waited to see if hearing that would change the serious look on Yarne's face as he strongly considered just not going. When it didn't seem to have any effect, she heaved a sigh. "Okay, fine, I'll go by myself and you can stay here and do your normal Friday things, that's no problem. I'll even tell them that you're counting Monday as your last visit with them, I'm fine with that."

He wiggled and wobbled a little as he thought about accepting that offer, but there was just enough sarcasm in Kjelle's voice that he knew she wasn't actually fine with him not going if she went. "I'll get changed and then we can go," he said, defeated as she stepped out of his way to allow him to enter the bedroom to do exactly as he'd said he would. It was only when he was inside the room that he noticed that there were already clothes set out on the bed for him to change into. "Did you pick these for me?"

"Look closer."

With a nod, he did exactly that, and realized that the clothes were brand new, with tags still on the shirt and the pants. That led him to look at her, a confused expression on his face "Where did these come from? I didn't get them and forget about them, did I?"

"Nope, you sure didn't. I wasn't going to be the only one having to wear clearly brand-new clothes tonight, so I might've checked the sale racks for something for you to wear too." Kjelle scratched at the back of her neck while Yarne's eyes ran her up and down, him realizing that she was indeed wearing things he hadn't seen her in before. "Don't size me up like a piece of meat, thanks. I think you can figure out why I needed something new without checking me all over."

Slightly flustered, he turned to grab his new clothes and start changing into them. "I-I don't know what you're talking about," he stammered, knowing exactly why but not wanting to address it on his own. "You look perfectly normal to me, from head to toe."

"Perfectly normal," she repeated, shaking her head. "Of course, how could I be so dense as to forget that I've always had real curves before now? I'm so used to wearing leggings for work that when I went to put on real pants this morning to go to my appointment and they wouldn't fit over hips I swear I didn't have before…"

"Yeah, uh, that's what I noticed when I looked at you." It most certainly wasn't, and just thinking about how Yarne's eyes had immediately gravitated to his girlfriend's chest and how it seemed bigger every time he looked at it made him even more flustered than he already was. "I don't know if it's going to be easy to hide all of this from everyone at this point, just saying."

"I don't think it's happening, honestly. The moment one of them asks, I think it's going to have to be addressed. But that's fine, really, we're confident everything's going to be okay and besides, I'd rather have to tell them now than wait until it's even more obvious." At that, she ran a hand over her stomach, which still looked the same even in the shirt she was currently wearing. "It's only a matter of time at this point that they start getting suspicious about this, pretty sure."

Even though he wasn't watching what she was doing, Yarne knew what Kjelle had just done and nodded slowly as he switched the shirt he was wearing to the new one. "Honestly, I'm kind of surprised about how this is going, how you're still able to mask everything. I'd think that the baby would be a giant in there, seeing as I'm kind of a giant myself and all."

"Your height literally has zero bearing on how big they'll be as they're growing, don't worry. That was one of the many questions I asked today, after addressing everything else that's been going on." While that was a good thing to hear, it still didn't make Yarne confident in there being no possibility that tiny little Kjelle would have to carry a much bigger than average child, simply because they were pretty good at subverting all expectations between the two of them. It was almost like Kjelle knew that he was thinking about that, because she firmly added, "I'm serious, the chances of them being big are the exact same as them being small, it's not influenced by either of our sizes at all."

"We'll have to wait and see if that's true, then." Now he was in the middle of putting on the new pants instead of the ones he'd worn to work, and Yarne was genuinely shocked that they fit him properly as he got them on and fastened. Usually, when it came to pants length, it was a matter of having to try on every pair in the right waist size to see if they were actually as long as advertised, so for someone else to have gotten it right first try, he was completely surprised. He gestured to them once they were on and weren't riding up higher on his calf than any normal pair of pants, and she laughed, explaining that she'd taken an old pair of his and measured them before going to the store, just to save herself that headache in getting the wrong size.

It seemed that this idea of trying to mask things being a little off by dressing them both in brand new clothes was one that had been thought out fairly well, and he was impressed with the effort she'd put into things. "Well, you know, they asked us to dress somewhat nicely and I wasn't going to make it super obvious by wearing something less nice and more practical, even if it would've been easier," she said, scrunching her mouth from side to side after speaking. "Cheaper, too, but it had to be done at some point anyway so here we are."

"I hope that, for how much effort you've given here, that you're able to get away with not needing to tell anyone what's going on," Yarne told her, as he headed back toward the bedroom door to go put his shoes back on. "I think you deserve a bit of a reward for your planning, and that'd be a great reward."

"We can hope all we want about that, but I don't think it's going to work. Can't go in without giving at least a little effort, though." Following him out of the room, Kjelle seemed to be in pretty high spirits, even with the reality of what was going to happen looming overhead. This dinner wasn't meant to be a fun time, it was meant as a temporary farewell, and she didn't want to take away from the point of the whole evening.

Unfortunately, the moment they walked up to the front door of the restaurant that they'd been invited to and she saw her reflection in the glass they were approaching, she knew that her cover wasn't going to last three seconds in front of observant eyes. Her silhouette was altered just enough that it made it clear something was amiss, and no amount of trying to change how she was walking and standing could create an illusion that she was perfectly normal. So, with that inevitable defeat hanging over her, they went inside and let the greeter at the counter know what party they were there for, and by the time they were halfway to the back of the restaurant, it seemed that they'd already been spotted and with that, all bets were off for what was going to happen.

"You two are looking nice this evening," Lucina called when she saw them almost at the table, waving for them to come over to the end of the table where she and Gerome had their chairs picked out. "That shirt is very flattering on you, Yarne, the color suits you perfectly." She was referring to the bright yellow ducks and blue background of the shirt, which was far from flattering in anyone else's opinion but it was cute and it had been cheap on the sale rack, which was the only reason he had it. "As for you, KT…mind coming with me for a moment, actually? I don't want to put you on the spot out here."

"No, go ahead and just ask it here, I'm already ready for it," she replied, putting a smile on her face as she reached for Yarne's arm to grab in support. "Seriously, there's no point in taking me aside to ask about it."

"Okay, well, I can't help but notice that you're dressed a bit out of your usual style, even being asked to dress nicer for a change. I wasn't even aware that you owned anything that wasn't athletic wear or pairs of jeans, which definitely would have worked for tonight, by the way." Lucina pursed her lips together, glancing around to see who all was around and finding that, for the moment, it was just Gerome and the two she'd asked to come over. "I know this is a sensitive topic, and forgive me if I'm misreading everything, but wearing dress pants that aren't just leggings in disguise? Having actual cleavage showing from your shirt? Is there something going on medically that we need to be aware of? We can postpone our move for a little while if you need my support right now, I don't want to abandon a longtime friend in her time of need."

Almost like she was completely caught off-guard by what had just been said, Kjelle's eyes were narrowed as she looked down at herself (having noticed already that her shirt was slightly lower-cut, but to be fair Lucina was wearing something similar), but when she looked back at her friend she softened her expression a little. "I mean, I…suppose you could refer to what's going on as something medical, but it's none of the same nonsense as before. Actually, it's kind of the…opposite?"

Lucina brought a hand to rest against her mouth, her lips clearly parting behind them showing that she was processing what she'd just heard. "Oh, how exciting! Did they find a way to reverse all of the damage those medications you took years ago did to you? I wouldn't think that you'd be willing to let them alter your body unless they did find something concrete, you're not that kind of person."

"What are you going on about? No one's done anything to me. Well, except for…" Her voice trailing off as she realized how awkward the direction of her sentence ultimately was, Kjelle pulled Yarne in front of herself a little. "Hey, Yarne, you tell Lucina what's going on, I'm sure she'll believe you so much more than she'd believe me."

"Do I have to?" he asked, whining a little, and he was greeted with a light stomp on his foot, which he had expected but still didn't want. "Okay, okay, uh, how do I word it? I haven't had to tell anyone this yet, do I just come out and say it or what?"

"I, ahem, don't think there's much of a need for you to say it at this point," Lucina laughed, reaching forward and placing one hand on each of them. "I suppose my train of thought was a bit further down the track than where it should've been, hm? Here I was, thinking that you were looking into possibilities of being able to have children, but you're—"

"Like twelve weeks past that point? Don't worry, the fact that it's happening at all has kind of been a huge shock, because this was all unplanned and completely unintentional. Just a miracle in the first place." While she knew that she could have just rolled with the ideas that were being flung at her, Kjelle didn't want to cause any trouble by lying about things and needing to cover her tracks later, so she'd just decided to come clean right then. She didn't realize that someone was approaching them all from behind when she'd said that, though, so when another set of hands grabbed her from behind and she heard Cynthia's squealing coming from just above her head, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Does that mean you've known about this longer than, like, this week?" Cynthia asked, her voice still fairly squeal-ish as she was talking. "And if you have known it that long, that means you didn't tell me when you could have when I invited you to dinner, which is kind of rude, don't you think? Shouldn't friends share that stuff with each other?"

"To be fair, I haven't wanted to share this with anyone. Outside of family, you guys are the first ones to hear anything, and I only said something because Lucina kind of was on the right path to figuring it out herself." Kjelle paused, thinking if she should add the other part she wanted to say, before going ahead and doing it. "Only kind of, barely, though. She was pretty far off in the wrong direction, but I couldn't keep this from her forever."

Squealing again, Cynthia came around and wrapped her arm over Lucina's shoulders, so that she could face the others instead of standing behind them. "I'm so excited about this, you have no idea how happy this is making me right now. I'm excited, and also a little bit jealous, but I can't be upset. I know how this is a huge deal for you, with all of those problems you've had going on."

"I don't mean to interrupt your little powwow over there," Gerome commented from where he was still sitting at the table, head turned so that he wasn't looking at any of them but rather in the direction of the door, "but tonight's for something else. If you want to celebrate whatever the hell is going on there, do it some other time."

"Right, not everyone's going to be thrilled with finding out that there's a baby here with us," Lucina said, shaking her head as she heard what her boyfriend had to say. "At least we can all know that's something to look forward to, and I'm sure I'll get to hear more about this when you come visit me later this year. Er, that is, if you're still going to come visit."

"Trust me, as long as they'll let me leave, I'm planning on coming out there to see you guys. That might not be up to me, though, so sorry if our girls' trip becomes a solo one, Cynthia," Kjelle apologized, looking at her friend's orange curls bouncing up and down as she didn't seem too bothered by what she'd just heard. "All of this has been so hard to keep under wraps, even though that's exactly how I've wanted it."

"Your secret's still safe with me, unless it's not a secret anymore," Cynthia promised her, motioning across her lips like she was zipping something. "Then it can be anything but safe, if you're fine with that. Ooh, wait, I thought Yarne's mom is—"

That was when Yarne, knowing exactly where that sentence was headed, forcibly moved himself and Kjelle a few steps backward. "Please don't remind me about that, please," he begged, trying to make his disdain for that topic very well understood. "I'm still trying to process how this is all happening at the same time, I just don't need to hear about it again."

"—oh, my bad! I'm just so excited for all of you!" Now swinging her head to the side, Cynthia was letting her curls fly around everywhere as she chirped, "I think, as soon as I get home later, I'm telling Inigo that we've got to get on this baby thing before everyone else leaves us behind! We can't be left out!"

"That's…definitely not the takeaway you should be getting from this," Lucina remarked, as she went to take her seat for the first time since people had started arriving. "But who am I to stop you from making that decision? I can say with confidence that learning about this hasn't stirred any deep-seated desires to be a mother within myself, but if it's done that for you, then so be it, I guess."

Rather than stand there and keep listening to that conversation unfold as it was, Yarne continued moving himself and Kjelle backward until they were at the other end of the table, where he sat himself down and offered her the chair next to him. She got as far as pulling it out before freezing, turning to look at him with a panicked look in her eye, and gave him a single-finger gesture that she would be right back. As she headed away, toward the front of the restaurant, he sighed and let his shoulders slump, unable to really slide down in the chair due to how unequipped it was for someone of his height. "I hope that wasn't a sign that she needed me to follow her," he muttered, feeling twinges of guilt that he hadn't even considered that until right then. "She didn't seem to want to ask me to do anything out loud, at the very least."

"Yarne, are you really going to sit all the way down there?" Lucina called down the table, and he looked over at her, with Gerome on one side and Cynthia right across from her, the three of them seeming so far away yet incredibly close at the same time. "I promise that, if you're closer our way, we won't badger you with questions and comments about the you-know-what, if that's what you're worried about."

"Oh, uh, I just want to be where it's probably a bit quieter, and Kjelle usually wants the same thing, so we'll be good down here." His answer was the truth, and he wasn't expecting the whole rest of the table to fill up so sitting on the end opposite the guests of honor felt like the wise idea. He was right in that there were still empty chairs at the table by the time dinner got started, but his logic that the end he picked would be quieter was flawed in that they ended up with Owain down on their side, him endlessly talking about whatever tickled his fancy to whoever would humor him.

At the very least, having Owain with them meant that everything that was being said around them related back to him in some way, rather than trying to talk too much about others. "Look, I know that we saw each other, like, a couple months ago, but it feels like it's been forever and I really want to make up for lost time," he explained, gesturing grandly with his hands to everyone on their end of the table. "Doing things like this really takes me back to the old days where we could do this a lot easier."

"And for reasons that are a bit lighter than someone moving away for an extended period of time," Brady added, sitting right next to Owain and looking like he wished he could've been anywhere else. "Last time we got together, while it was a great idea and I'm glad we did it, kinda got a bit ruined by some of ya deciding you could invite others that weren't welcome."

"Hey now, this time Lucina made it very clear that I couldn't invite anyone other than myself, which I've obviously taken in stride. A true hero doesn't need to bring his companions with him wherever he goes." With a chuckle, Owain looked across the table at Yarne and Kjelle, and how they were sitting very close to each other, then shifted his gaze back over toward Brady. "Well, his companions that aren't already part of the crew. Besides, Niles is doing something else tonight and I didn't want to even bother trying to get him out of it. You know, he's been trying to get me into this game he's been playing, and I keep having to tell him I'm not that interested even though I am, I just don't have the time for that sort of thing in my life."

"Sounds like a problem you'll have to solve on your own, instead of throwing it on us despite us not having asked a word about it," Laurent grumbled, the unfortunate one to be the bridge between their group at the end and the group on the other side of the table. "I had been hoping to speak with Lucina regarding something tonight, but instead of getting that opportunity, I get stuck listening to your ramblings with no end in sight."

Stifling a laugh as she watched Owain begin to sputter at being called out like that, Kjelle leaned her head over onto Yarne's arm and said, "Look, as much as I love these people and spending time with them, how long are we going to be stuck here dealing with this? We got to talk to Lucina, we got to handle everything I wanted to take care of, can we go soon or something? Not really feeling this right now."

"But it was your idea to come out for this dinner, don't you remember?" Yarne, slightly surprised and even more confused about what he was hearing, put his head down on top of Kjelle's, realizing that several pairs of eyes were beginning to fall onto them. "I think we should stay as long as we can, just to make sure it's absolutely clear we didn't come for just the free food."

"Something simply is amiss between you two, I can tell just sitting here," Laurent said, raising an eyebrow above the rim of his glasses as he leaned over the table just a bit. "Has trouble began brewing in the paradise you have futily tried to create for yourself? While I know that neither of you buy into the whole concept of practical magic, I happen to know of a place that dabbles in those sorts of tonics and potions, if you want to try and re-spark the flame of your early romance?"

"We don't need your mother's sorry excuses for 'love' potions or anything like that," Kjelle snapped in return, bucking Yarne's head off of her so she could sit back up abruptly. "I know she thinks she can make a killing off of selling that stuff at that little shop of hers, but none of it works, and besides, we seriously don't need it."

"Yeah, all we need is a bit of the supposed fertility wine my mom swears by," joked Yarne with a smile on his face, one that was met with horrified looks from the men on the other side of the table. "Uh, I wasn't serious about that. It was definitely a joke. Nothing more than a harmless joke."

Reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose, Kjelle took in several deep breaths while she thought about how to react to what had just been said, for better or worse. "You know, Yarne, being that specific and then denying things tends to have the opposite effect on how people take something."

"But it really is just a joke," he asserted, looking down at her and how disappointed she seemed to be in what he'd done. "I mean, who would actually sell that kind of stuff?"
Laurent slowly raised his hand, before retracting it when he saw the pointed look that Kjelle was giving him for it. "While I cannot say that my mother sells those particular sorts of concoctions, I do know that when she gets the physical location of her store in working order, she does intend on looking into branching out into drinks of that nature. Apparently there is quite the market for them coming from overseas. To my knowledge, there's an entire brand of wines sold here in Ylisse to people who believe in their mystical powers."

"Mystical powers? Like, teaching someone to fly or gain super strength?" Owain seemed to have missed the point of what was being talked about, but his outburst in relation to his own interests seemed to take the edge off of what had already been said a little.

Until Laurent, with his eyes still on Kjelle watching her reaction, continued to talk about what he knew about the so-called mystical powers of the wines. "My apologies, but not those sorts of powers. These are more of the natural supplement variety, that are meant to boost what the body is already capable of. The ones that Mother speaks of most are, in fact, touted as fertility boosters that are incredibly popular within certain circles, of which several exist here in Ylisse."

"Know-it-all," she hissed under her breath, before averting her eyes away from his as she chose to just come out with it all. "The wine like that we had the…misfortune of experiencing was nastier than anything on its own, but there's something about it that…" She let her sentence drift off into silence as she saw everyone once again looking at her, all of the attention not something she wanted in that moment. "They work. You can look to Yarne's mom as proof for that."

"Correct, she would be why Mother has gotten to know a bit more about the brand," Laurent said, bowing his head before quietly adding, "and why your deception here isn't going to work on me."

"I'm sorry, what?"

He lifted his head to see that Kjelle was getting to her feet, leaning over the table like she was trying to reach across to grab him and drag him over. "The moment that Yarne mentioned the wine, I could piece things together to know that when Mother mentioned to me that she had heard talk of two people who could call this year's particular selection of the wine a success, you must be the second instance. I chose not to say anything about it unless it came up in natural conversation, much like it has now."

Sitting back down and feeling the chair nearly knock backward underneath her, Kjelle exhaled a long, deep breath. "Right. I should've known that her knowing was bad news for us, but I was stupid enough to believe that maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to keep her mouth shut about it."

"He didn't say that Mom told anyone, just that he figured it out based on what…" Yarne swallowed down hard, knowing that what he was about to say was the worst possible thing he could say. "Based on what I said. For once, Mom's not in the wrong."

Reaching up and waving his hand between everyone, Brady looked at the two sides of the table down on their end, his brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of what was going on. "Can one of you explain what's happenin' here, because I think I got lost around the time Owain started goin' on about super powers. What's this deal with this wine?"

Rather than let anyone else talk in that moment, Kjelle gestured for both Laurent and Yarne to keep their mouths shut, before she put her forced smile on her face and looked at Brady with a fire in her eyes. "There's a wine that's nasty as hell that also is apparently meant to be a taguel fertility wine, which we didn't know until far too late in the bottle and, well, somehow it managed to create a medical miracle." She saw that Brady was still looking just as confused, even though Owain next to him looked like he was about to start screaming (or get the attention of others down at the other end of the table). "We're saying that this special wine is the reason that I was able to get pregnant. That's all."

"Oh, that makes—hold on, what'd you just say?" It seemed that Brady continued to not fully grasp what was being told to him, which was perfectly reasonable given how bizarre of a situation he was being informed of. "I could've sworn you just told us all that you're—"

"No, no, you heard me right. Despite everything, I'm like twelve weeks pregnant with a child that really shouldn't exist. And it's thanks to that wine, or at least we're going to say that's the case." She could see that it was dawning on him, and the look of excitement on his face made her at least a little thankful that the people that were learning this now were happy for them. "So yeah, that's what's going on here."

"Fascinating that it happened even with your fraught medical history, I will have to let Mother know of this so she can plan for stocking those wines accordingly." Laurent nodded enthusiastically, before grabbing his phone from under the table and flipping it open, going through the motions of the slow, old-school way of sending a text message to his mother to let her know right then.

Meanwhile, Owain was grabbing at the sides of his hair, trying his hardest not to let out a disruptive scream. "This is the biggest thing that's ever happened in this friend group, and there's been a lot of big things that have happened here! Does my dearest cousin know already, or are you saving that for after her departure?"

"She learned before everyone got here, she picked up on it on her own. Actually, now that you all down here know, there's just a couple people here that I haven't personally told, and honestly? If they overheard me saying it I wouldn't be that mad about it." Kjelle raised her voice for the last sentence, getting the attention of the assorted people in the middle of the table, specifically Nah (who gave a giant smile and nodded eagerly when she realized that she was being spoken to) and Noire (who wasn't as happy about having her attention called, and looked rather sour-faced about it until Nah whispered something in her ear). Once she had both of them looking in her direction, she made a couple of tell-tale hand gestures that both of the ladies immediately understood. Talking over their now combined squealing and excitement, Kjelle finished, "There, now everyone here knows, and it's just the people 'too cool' to be here that don't know."

"So Severa and Inigo, makes sense," Brady said, after doing a quick headcount of everyone who was there and looking relieved at getting to say one of those names. "And Morgan, but I doubt you'd have been tellin' him about this so I'm not going to count him."

"Right, and Cynthia's going to tell Inigo as soon as they both get home, so it's just Severa who doesn't know." Blinking, it was then that it hit Kjelle that Severa just wasn't there that night, and she definitely didn't know why. "Hey, have any of you heard from her lately? Last time I spoke to her, she wasn't exactly in a great situation."

Hearing that, Yarne remembered that morning when Severa had come over unannounced and needed somewhere to stay while things blew over back home with her parents, and he was surprised that Kjelle hadn't heard any follow-ups from that day. It seemed that no one else had, either, and that prompted the need for someone to go ask at the other side of the table if anyone knew what was going on with Severa. Laurent ended up volunteering himself, less out of kindness and more out of saving everyone else the trouble, and while he was out of his chair, the others sat in an awkward silence, waiting for him to come back.

"Lucina told me that she never got a response when she gave the invitation, but that it was read at some point," he told them all upon his return to his seat, a grimace forming on his face. "I take it that she's simply unavailable, or that her phone is in someone else's hands."

"Maybe she was able to get out and went off with that friend of hers?" Yarne suggested, knowing that it had been tossed around as the best-case scenario for her solving her problem when she'd brought it to him in the first place. "Her life at home was worse than mine ever was, and we all know how bad things were when I was still living with my parents."

"I'm going to try calling her right now," Owain said, picking his phone up off of the table and dialing in Severa's number as fast as he could, so fast that no one had time to form a good reaction to the suggestion to get him to choose to do otherwise. He made sure that it was on speakerphone so that everyone could hear as it rang, catching even the attention of those at the other end of the table just because of how sudden the sound was. When the call went to voicemail after many tense rings, he hung up and tried again and again, until there wasn't even any ringing and it was going straight to leaving her a message.

In the wake of that defeat, he seemed to be at a loss for what to say, staring at his phone in disbelief at what had just happened. "Come on, she's probably aware of who's all here and doesn't want to have to deal with certain people," Kjelle remarked, giving a rather pointed look in Brady's direction, him not even flinching at her accusation. "I'll try reaching out to her tomorrow and see what's going on, but let's leave her alone tonight, okay?"

"But I want to know where one of my best friends might be right now, if she's in dire need of assistance or is just busy." Hanging his head so low that it rested upon the phone, Owain gave a drawn-out sigh that showed he wasn't fond of having to accept losses. "But I understand. I just hope she's okay, it's been a while since I've seen her myself."

"Now that comes off as strange, given that the two of you have plenty of mutual friends outside of this group." Laurent's comment, while unnecessary, drove home the point that not hearing from Severa for any amount of time wasn't normal with her, and they were all left fearing the worst regarding her well-being for the rest of the dinner.

The meal and get-together did come to an end eventually, though, and as people began trickling out they were saying their well wishes to the moving couple, as well as congratulations to the couple that had kind of dropped sudden news on them all. Cynthia was there longer than most of the others, chattering excitedly about all of the big changes the people around her were going to be going through and lamenting how she wished she'd be able to experience something that big too. Naturally, when she got a text message from Inigo letting her know he was on his way home, she jumped to her feet and twirled around in her excitement. "I really mean it, I'm telling him we're not getting left behind with your life changes, and I am seriously telling him tonight," she said, a finger pointed directly toward Kjelle, who shook her head at the entire display. "Don't you think it'll be great if your baby has a friend that close in age?"

"Given that they'll have…well, you know," she replied, not wanting to explicitly speak a reminder about the aspect of things Yarne really didn't want to hear about, "I'm sure that they'll be perfectly fine with the company they're already getting. Don't make some huge life decision because of us."

"But we're always left out of things, and I want to be a part of something for once!" Her feet tapping around with all of her energy, Cynthia eventually said her goodbyes and promised that she would at least properly explain the situation before any decisions were made, but in her wake everyone understood that the chances of that happening were slim to none.

Finally, though, it was the exact same four there at the end as it had been at the start, much later than originally anticipated. "I would've figured all of the people here would've been too…people-y for you to stay this long, Yarne," Lucina laughed as she and Gerome came to meet them down at their end of the table. "Did something change, or are you still here only because Kjelle wants you here?"

"Definitely the latter option," he replied, looking at his girlfriend and how she had a look of concentration on her face. "Hey, what're you thinking about? This isn't still about Severa not being here, is it?"

Kjelle shook her head, standing up from the table and gesturing with one waving hand directly at Lucina. "Stay right there for a moment, will you? I need to go get something to show you real quick." She headed to the restaurant door, going quickly through the mostly-empty building, and in her absence Lucina looked at Yarne again and raised her eyebrows, but didn't say anything.

"You don't think she just heard you ask me that and is leaving over it, do you?" Yarne asked after several moments of the silent stare, patting his pocket to realize that at some point, Kjelle had ended up with the car keys in her possession. "Well, maybe she really is leaving, so I might be needing a ride home."

"I'm not leaving you, dummy," they all heard Kjelle reply as she could easily hear what had been said even though she was just re-entering the part of the restaurant they were hanging out in. As everyone turned to look at her, she held up what she'd gone to go get—the same photo album that she'd gotten from her parents' house when she'd last been over there. "I said I needed to get something to show Lucina and I wasn't lying about that."

"Ooh, what is it?" Her curiosity getting the better of her, Lucina took several large, almost running steps to meet Kjelle halfway to the table, coming back alongside her as she looked down at the book. "Oh man, these are your sports pictures! I remember you telling me you had a whole album dedicated to them forever ago."

"Right, and I just got it out of my old bedroom last time I was at my parents' place. Now's as good a time as any to go looking through them, especially since you're leaving for a while." She sat back down in her original chair when she was back at the table, Lucina hovering over her and Gerome taking the chair right to the other side, so that all three of them were able to see what pictures were going to be shown.

When she opened the album, the first page was dedicated to a very, very young Kjelle holding different sports equipment and posing in hats far too big for her tiny head, a page that had Lucina giving a soft aww while Yarne reached over and grabbed Kjelle's leg, knowing that they'd get the opportunity to recreate some of those with a child of their own soon enough. "Sorry if I can't exactly tell you when some of these are from, I don't have all of the dates I played these sports memorized," she apologized as she turned the page and they were met with a similar spread, this time with her in different uniforms for different professional sports teams. "Well, except these, I very obviously haven't played for any of these teams in my lifetime."

Moving past that page, the pictures from actual sports teams she'd played on over the years started to appear. At first they were very clearly pictures taken of a child who didn't want to have to pose with the ball or the bat or whatever tool was necessary to get the correct shot, but as they went further into the album, the pictures became more natural-looking in how they were posed. "Oh gods, I didn't know you were on some of these teams," Lucina remarked, pointing to one of the pictures of Kjelle leaning on a bat that was taken when she had to have been no more than ten years old. "Were you on the ones that liked doing the food names? The color names?"

"For the team shirts? Usually it was favorite food name, yeah, but there was one time…" Kjelle trailed off, flipping through a few more pages and marking where they'd left off by holding her finger as a bookmark. "Here, this one, this team had us going by our middle names if we had one, then just your first name if you didn't." Sure enough, the spread on the particular page she was open to had a picture where she was posed with her back toward the camera, the smudged writing across her shoulders supposedly reading as Tatjana but it was clear whoever'd written it had misspelled it on their first try. "Literally everyone ended up calling me Kjelle anyway, because no one could figure out how to say my middle name."

"Ugh, I'm sure my parents have the picture of me on a team that did the same thing, down to the obvious mistake at writing the name on my shirt. I remember Father being so upset when I came home with a shirt that said Emmy on the back, but Mother laughed and laughed about it and said that it was probably for the best that they couldn't manage to spell Emmeryn for that reason." Lucina, laughing as she recalled that story, waited patiently for the pages in the book to be turned back to where they'd been so they could continue through the pictures chronologically.

This whole experience was something that Yarne hadn't ever had before, he'd never gotten to see pictures of his girlfriend when she was little and doing the things that she'd loved doing back then. He'd certainly heard about all of the sports she'd played as a kid, and how good she'd been at most of them, but seeing the old pictures and the team names and records really solidified that fact for him. "Hey, before you move on," he said after the pages visible were about a co-ed kids' baseball team, where there was a picture of the whole team in addition to the solo shots of Kjelle. "Why are you doing this right now? If this was to show Lucina, wouldn't you want to show her the pictures she might be in?"

"Well, any of the pictures she'd be in, she'd have saved somewhere already, this is just to show her how many of these things I have." To make it clear that she wasn't going to skip any pages, Kjelle went slowly through the next several, until she reached the teams she played on at a middle school age, having to flip between teams from in school and teams from out of school. The sheer number of pictures made it hard to believe that she would have had the time to do anything except eat, sleep, go to school, and play sports, but she stressed over and over that she'd had free time every now and then, and that she'd been happy spending all of her time playing those different sports.

When they got to the high school age soccer pictures, that was when Lucina sighed and tried to wrangle the pages by faster. "We don't need to look at these ones, I'm sure we all can remember what we both looked like back then," she told them as she tried to flip past what she didn't want being shown off, but Kjelle was refusing to do anything but go at her own pace through the book. Admitting defeat, Lucina pulled her hand back and sighed. "Okay, well, friendly reminder that it wasn't my idea to have braces and play soccer at the same time, that was all on my parents."

"That was literally the first year that we played on a team together, wasn't it?" Kjelle asked, leaning closer into the book so that she could look carefully at the team picture on their current page. "Which I think would be this team right here, actually."

"And that's why I said we don't need to look at these ones." Lucina sounded like she really was trying to hide something from everyone else, which she went on to explain fairly well right away. "This was before any of you were in high school, so outside of the people who knew me because we grew up in the same circles, this was the first time I really met anyone in our friend group. That being Kjelle, naturally."

"Right, and you only really got to know me because you were perpetually on the bench for showing up to practice late and I was on there because of countless injuries." Leaning back once more, Kjelle placed a finger on the team picture, her fingertip right under her chin in the picture itself. "Just look at me, I loved playing sports but half the time, I wasn't cleared to play until day-of games." She looked basically the same as she always had, just as small and fierce with her expression as usual. "Then there's Lucina, back row center, being one of the oldest people on the team."

"We're going to ignore me here, we're not even doing this for me, remember?" Also reaching onto the picture with a finger, Lucina used hers to cover what was assumed to be her own face, but she moved it when Gerome grabbed her wrist and gently pulled it to the side. "You've probably seen worse pictures than this of me, honestly."

"Looks like the same Lucina I met my first day of high school." Gerome's reply was crisp and succinct, and it felt like he wasn't going to say anything else, until he abruptly added, "Since this wasn't a school-related team, did they do any of those weird jersey names for you?"

The two ladies looked at each other, before Kjelle replied, "Nope, that was really only a thing in the teams meant for younger players. That was the first soccer team that I played on that actually used the one part of my name people don't seem to struggle on."

"Same here, you'd never guess how often people called me Lucian when I'd be playing and it would throw me all off. Like, that's not my name, why can't you say it right?" Even though her hand was still being held by Gerome's in a way, Lucina moved her finger to point at the bottom of the picture, where the list of players in order of where they stood was printed; it was done entirely by first initial, last name, and she was able to find her own easily, given where she was standing in the picture. As for finding Kjelle's, all she had to do was slide down two rows on the list, as they were in nearly identical places within their rows in the picture to begin with. "Remember the time they managed to spell it wrong and your parents came and threatened the coach a little over it?"

"How would I forget? It was Mom's fault to begin with, she was the one who spelled it wrong on the paperwork and didn't bother checking it. Of course, once that became known she wanted to blame me for not checking it, and blame Dad for making me have his name in the first place, but…" Kjelle took in a deep breath, before leaning over to rest her head on Yarne's arm for a moment. "When it comes down to it, you're spelling your last name for everyone, because I'm not going to even bother."

"W-what do you mean by that?" Yarne asked, having gotten so engrossed in looking at the pictures that he wasn't fully paying attention to what was going on in the conversation. "I don't know why you'd be needing to spell it in the first place, but it's not that difficult."

Everything went silent between them, before it was Gerome speaking up again. "Sorry if this comes off as rude, but what even is your last name, Yarne? Been so long since I last heard it that I can't say I remember."

Not seeing how that could have been taken as rude, given how forgettable he was at times, Yarne mumbled the response, only for Kjelle to say something over him. "Seeing as I've been blessed with something as easy as Laine for all of my life, and even then I've had to spell it a million times over," she said, flicking at her name as it was listed on the team picture, "I'm really not looking forward to having to actually learn how to spell Leichtfoot for everyone."

"That sounds…really easy, I don't get why you're up in arms over such a simple name." That was what prompted Yarne to spell it, slowly and timidly, for them all to hear, which made Gerome suddenly understand the problem. "You mean it's been that difficult all this time? Your poor parents, your poor sister, your poor…well, you know."

"Can we stop making this about me? I liked it more when we were looking through the pictures and just talking about them." Yarne waited to hear if anyone was going to comment more on his name, then when no one did and Kjelle even went back to leaning closer to her photo album, he knew that the discussion had passed them by.

Even still, with what he'd just heard fresh in his mind, he was very mindful of all the times he saw pictures of the back of Kjelle's jerseys, knowing that she had plenty of struggles with getting that name spelled correctly for herself. Unlike the picture of her from when she was younger, where her middle name had been smudged in trying to fix it, there were no signs of her name being misspelled on the backs of these jerseys. He was sure that he would have remembered if that was the case, especially when it came to the custom ones she'd gotten during her time on school sports teams. Most of the time it was just Laine pasted onto the back of the shirt, over her number (she'd always been number 8 in ever sport she could get it in) and the school crest; sometimes, in the pictures from their first year of high school it was K. Laine on there, but in the ones that were at the end of the book, it was KT Laine on the back, which was how he'd remembered watching her at the games he'd attended.

"I wish they'd let me do first and middle initials on my jerseys," Lucina muttered, as she stared at one of the pictures in which that was the case for Kjelle. "I asked them a few times, since other girls on the team were allowed to do it, but they said I didn't have a reason for doing it. How'd you manage to get permission?"

"You know, I don't really remember how I did it, I just know that one season they said they were giving me new jerseys and that was how they came out." She paused, then shook her head. "No, wait, I remember now. Something about some TV show that I never watched, can't remember which one it was but…yeah, that was a thing. Kind of made my life a bit hellish for a while, but I managed."

She turned to the last picture in the album, which was not her in any sports-related attire in the slightest, but rather in the nicest clothes she'd been able to find, holding the scholarship acceptance letter she'd received regarding her athletic prowess. Even though the picture was slightly zoomed out, it was clear that the letter started much like a diploma looked, before fading into letters too small to make out in its current form. "Anyway, since I rescued this from my parents' house, I figured it'd be fun to look through together before you guys left for a while. Since, well, when you get back things are going to be all sorts of different around here for all of us."

"For all of us?" Lucina repeated, before putting her hand down on top of Kjelle's head and scrunching her fingers in her hair. "Things will be pretty much the same as always for me and Gerome six months from now, I think you're talking more about yourself than anything else, aren't you?"

Sighing as she closed the photo album, Kjelle allowed for her whole body to relax a bit deeper into her chair. "You've caught me there, I'm definitely talking about myself. Who knows exactly how things are going to be when you get back, there's so many things that can change in a second."

"There's one thing that I hope you'll warn us about if it changes." Looking from down at Kjelle to over at Yarne and back, Lucina seemed to hesitate on her words for a moment before jumping for it anyway. "If you decide you're getting married before you have this baby, just…please, tell us. I'd like to be here if I can be."

Even though they'd previously had the conversation about how that wasn't a priority right then, Yarne didn't know how to respond, so he deferred to what Kjelle's thoughts on the matter were at that moment. "I'll let you know if we make that choice, but that's such a big deal, I don't know if we're going to rush into that quite yet."

"That implies that having a child isn't a big deal, and I'd say that's honestly bigger," Gerome pointed out. "Which is why neither of those are things Lucina and I are worrying with right now. Too much weight in those decisions."

Yarne gave a soft squeak in surprise as he finally pieced something together from earlier in the conversation, but when all eyes were turned toward him for the sound, he started shaking his head rapidly. "No, no, don't worry about me! I just thought of something, that's all, it's nothing big in the slightest."

"If it wasn't something big, you wouldn't have made a noise over it." With a smile, Lucina let go of Kjelle's head and stepped back so that her friend could get out of her chair and stand next to it instead. Now that they were both on their feet, she wrapped Kjelle in a big hug, then offered the same to Yarne, but he declined with a simple gesture. "Okay, well, thank you both so much for coming out tonight! Getting to reminisce about the good old sports days was a real treat, and I'm thinking when I get back to Ylisse we're going to have to do this again with my set of pictures if I can find it."

"Right when you get back?" Kjelle asked, raising her eyebrows. "Or is that just your way of saying we'll need to plan it eventually, because we literally just mentioned what else'll be happening when you get back."

Lucina pushed her lips together, before giving a very slight shrug. "I guess we'll have to see what's going on when I get back before we decide. I don't want to have to wait forever to get to do my side of things, so if it's possible right when I get back I'm making it happen."

"Way to make it sound like a threat, but…sounds like a plan."

Even though they were in the process of trying to leave right then, it was still another half hour before they were properly in their own cars and on their way home, the ladies simply not wanting to stop talking even as they stood outside the restaurant. It bothered Yarne that he was so close to getting to go home and spend the rest of his night the way he wanted, as he kept inching his way closer to where they'd parked, but before he could get anywhere far, he had Gerome coming to talk to him. "What you realized before we got up from the table, was it related to something Kjelle said about your name?" Gerome whispered to him, not wanting to be overheard by the ladies, and Yarne was caught so off-guard by the question that he nodded to answer it properly. "I think that's why Lucina brought up the two of you getting married, because it seemed to be on Kjelle's mind whether she realized it or not."

"I don't—she's said—we're not planning getting married anytime soon," Yarne stammered, feeling his face heat up even in the cool evening air. "But then again, when we were talking about it, the situation was kind of different, and maybe she's reconsidered? I don't know, she seems pretty content with not needing to know how to spell my last name."

"My opinion is that you need to discuss it with her again, if things are different now than they were when you last talked about it." Gerome reached over and gave Yarne a firm pat on his arm. "Don't tell her you were given that idea from me. I'd rather stay out of things if I can help it."

"Noted. Thanks, Gerome." It wasn't something Yarne necessarily wanted on his mind right then, but it was something that had the ability to invade all of his thoughts and steer him into making certain decisions. One thing was for sure, regardless of getting married soon was in the cards or not for them—he had to make a change in his life that would allow him to make just a bit more money every paycheck. Whether that money was going to general expenses, saving for a ring, or just beginning to get things ready for the baby, he didn't know for certain, but he knew he needed to start making a little more any way he could.

Much like what Gerome had told him, that wasn't something he was going to specifically speak to Kjelle about, not anytime soon. He needed to give it a bit of time before he brought it up with her, because if she knew he was changing his normal Friday plans on a permanent basis after fighting against changing them once, she wasn't going to be happy about it.