Snoozle seemed like the idea place for Emilia and Delilah to catch up, considering that Emilia was sure her friend would want to see the place she spent so much of her waking hours in. Normally, she’d be bustling about between the kitchen and the counter, but today she’d gotten someone else to cover the customers while she set up one of the quieter corner tables with mimosas and breakfast pizza.
“You were in that same place Alicia was, yeah?” Emilia said as she handed one of the glasses to her friend. Em had been in another world before Atlantis, too, but it was a different one, something she and Alicia had talked about a little. The differences in their memories had taken a little getting used to, but that was just Atlantis.
Delilah had been very impressed by Emilia's shop on Atlantis, and even said as much before they'd settled into the booth for their meal. She was so glad that her friend was here, and able to do what she did best in the process. Delilah was unabashedly biased about Emilia's cooking, so it was great to see her friend so in her element in this other world.
She took the mimosa, and sipped at it as she thought about the other island she was questioned about. "I was," she confirmed. "But I didn't remember it until I woke up the other day." Delilah frowned thoughtfully, staring at the bubbles in her glass as she added, "It was kind of like this place, only without any... Purpose? It was like we were just someone's cosmic plaything... I don't know if that makes sense." She looked back up at Emilia, her expression mixed with confusion, yet a sense of hopefulness that her friend would at least sort of understand.
Emilia loved Snoozle, she really was in her element here. She’d started out as a field agent on one of the teams, but had eventually realized that was more suited to Alicia and that she’d be happier doing something like this and she was. That was just one of the things she needed to catch her friend up on, but she wanted to hear about Delilah’s life first.
She nodded as her friend tried to explain the island a little more. She did get it, at least as much as she could without having been there, herself. “Alicia didn’t tell me everything, but she did tell me a bit about it,” she said. “I was in a place like that, too. Breckenridge, in the States. We all just sort of woke up in this hole in a mountain and no one could sort out how to send us home. A lot of strange things happened and there didn’t seem to be a reason behind it all. Alicia was there, too, but she doesn’t remember.”
“Oh yeah! Alicia said she’d been to a few places when I asked her about remembering the island.” Delilah shook her head, thinking that it must be a bit overwhelming to have been to so many places without time really passing the way it should. “I guess all these weird other-world experiences makes more sense knowing that we’re not real. I mean, I still feel real, but well… You know what I mean.”
Delilah waved a hand flippantly, as though shooing away the thoughts about their mortality and existence, and turned her attention to the food between them. “This looks delicious! I’m so glad you get to do what you do best here. Are you happy?”
Emilia’s smile faltered for half a second as she thought about Delilah’s question before she put her happy face back on, even knowing that anyone who knew her well would be able to see through the facade.
“Atlantis is great!” she said rather than directly answering. When it came to everything she’d gone through here, it was hard to know where to start. Cappie, Leo, a couple of mission injuries - she’d been through a lot and was still kind of reeling from some of the changes, no matter how good she’d gotten at putting on the show of moving on with life.
With her attention on serving herself some of the breakfast pizza, Delilah almost missed the the expression. Dropping the slice onto a place, she squinted suspiciously. “There’s an unspoken but in that sentence… What are you not telling me?”
Emilia hesitated for a moment and then gave a halfhearted shrug. “A lot of strange things happen in Atlantis,” she explained. “Some of them are pretty fun.” Like the uncontrollable urge to snog your very attractive coworker and friend. “Some of them are really not so fun.” Like your sister being kidnapped or your boyfriend thinking he was in love with someone else. She sighed as she realized she wasn’t going to get away with half truths here and she might as well tell Delilah everything, so she did. She started with the easier things to explain - Alicia’s kidnapping, Leo coming and going before saying, “...then there was this guy.” She told Delilah about Cappie and how they’d met soon after Emilia had come to Atlantis and how Atlantis making him think he was the Tramp to someone else’s Lady had apparently been the final straw in doubts he’d been having, how he’d ended it after telling her he’d slept with his “Lady.”
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging again after she’d finished. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe it really was destined to end eventually, anyway.”
“What a load of bollocks!” Delilah exclaimed in response to Emilia’s comment. She’d been an avid listener during their conversation, her face going through a myriad of emotions as Emilia covered the good, bad, and ugly that Atlantis had to offer, and only interrupting a few times to ask some clarifying questions. She was still a bit distraught to learn about the kidnappings and torture, and a part of her was grateful that she hadn’t been present for them, even though it meant that she missed seeing Leo twice.
As she topped off both her own glass and Emilia’s with more champagne, Delilah added, “You guys have a kid together. AND OK, I know plenty of people have had kids without being in love, but… I from what you’ve said, this doesn’t seem like one of those situations.” She crinkled her nose thoughtfully, unable to help mentally comparing the Lady & Tramp situation to one that she remembered Alicia experiencing on the other island.
“I think he’s scared,” Delilah said, perhaps with more confidence than she should have in her assessment considering she didn’t really know Cappie at all. “The crazy magic in this place can make it hard to trust one’s instincts, and so if he doesn’t know whether or not some crazy compelled romance thing could happen again, he doesn’t want to hurt you. And boys can be so dumb about stuff like that-- thinking it’s better to hurt you with one break-up now, rather than risk the possibility that maybe he could unintentionally hurt you again later with things beyond his control.
“That’s just what I think, anyway,” she said, ending her little speech with a light shrug before taking a sip of the mimosa that was mostly just champagne now.
“Or maybe he just knew I wasn’t what he wanted long-term,” Emilia countered. “He has a girlfriend at home, she showed up for a while before she left, but he loves her. The future Bee comes from, he wasn’t around for that. He left before she was born, I guess. Maybe he went home to Casey, I don’t know, but there was this other timeline where she showed up and didn’t leave. I met their daughter from that one.”
Emilia had someone at home, too, of course. When the fight here was over and she was ready to go home, Lucas Cadwallader would be waiting, whether she ended up back in Breck or in their world and she did love him, too. It had taken her a while to be okay moving on and being with someone else here and a lot of that had been encouragement from Alicia with the reminder that Luke might not ever come to Atlantis. Until the breakup, she thought it was something she and Cappie understood about each other.
Ultimately, did it matter anyway? They were over, no matter the reason.
Delilah nodded in understanding, although her expression suggested she didn’t entirely agree with Emilia’s rationale. She would have to talk with Cappie before she made any firm decisions about their past. “I suppose we can’t completely count on the future to give us any hints, since there’s so many possible outcomes. It’s like that quote about the butterfly flapping its wings and causing a tsunami on the other side of the world. One small thing could change the possibilities.” She wasn’t trying to pry too much, but she had to ask, “If you knew that it didn’t have to end, that people weren’t going to go back to where they came from at some point, would you have stayed with him?”
“Yeah, of course I would,” Emilia answered without hesitation. “You never know what the future could hold, in Atlantis or anywhere else. People come and go a lot here, so I figure you have to just make the most of whatever time you get, but if I knew we could have a real future together, I would have been okay with that, too.”
She shrugged then. “It’s not just about what I want, though. Not when he doesn’t feel the same way.”
“That’s fair,” she conceded. Delilah vowed to herself that she would find out what Cappie’s true feelings were at some point, but for the moment she decided to steer the conversation in a new direction. The last thing she wanted to do was make Emilia feel sad when they were supposed to be catching up. “So, what is your favorite thing about Atlantis?”
That was something Emilia had to think about for a moment, but she was soon telling Delilah all about her favorite things and places. Despite a recent rough patch, life in Atlantis definitely wasn’t all bad. There was plenty of good to talk about, too