WHAT: Emme goes to Marlene to deal with the tension at home WHERE: Marlene's Morningside apartment WHEN: This morning, simultaneous to this WARNINGS: Some sad feels, as is the current theme STATUS: Complete
Emmeline closed the front door behind herself, and as the brisk November morning air hit her face, she wondered where exactly everything had gone so entirely wrong. She’d allowed Carol to think she was leaving for work, when the reality was she’d already called out for the day. They had never been the type of couple that hid things from one another, and yet somehow that’s exactly what they were both doing now.
The previous evening Carol had come home in a capital M Mood. She’d brushed it off as an intense sparring session with Tony, but Emmeline didn’t believe that for a moment. She’d gently prodded, but after Carol had waved her off multiple times, Emme excused herself to go upstairs. She headed to the bedroom and closed the door to escape the overwhelming amount of emotion that Carol had been radiating since she stepped into their home that night.
That’s when she’d seen the letter. It was out in full view on the nightstand, so it wasn’t like she was snooping. The paper was heavily creased and Emmeline could see at a glance that it had been read over and over again. Her eyes ran over the words written in neat, precise handwriting. Natasha’s handwriting.
At least now she had a better understanding of why Carol was currently downstairs slamming pots in the kitchen. Emme quietly folded the letter and placed it neatly in the drawer of Carol’s bedside table. Throughout the rest of the evening, as they ate dinner, did the dishes, and watched some TV before bed, Emmeline waited to see if Carol would bring up the letter. She didn’t. That was truly the point that she felt her heart begin to shatter. When Carol retreated to the study at bedtime, Emmeline went to sleep alone.
Now it was the following morning, and Emme had reached a point where she knew if she didn’t confide in someone that she would have a complete breakdown. With a sharp inhale, she apparated from their front porch to just inside Marlene McKinnon’s door.
She knew she looked a mess. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and she had dark circles underneath her eyes. All of her usual warmth and humour was missing from her expression, and it was all she could do not to immediately burst into tears. “Can we talk?”
When Marlene wasn’t working a shift, she was terribly lazy in the mornings, she’d be first to admit that. She spent a handful of her non-Defense days keeping an eye on Puddifoot’s, but for the most part, the shop ran itself. It seemed to have been charmed and spelled to function autonomously before it turned up; she and Emme had added a few more protections since her arrival, and voilà! It was a strange little haven for the overly cutesy and overly romantic that did everything aside from keep track of its own finances.
And since she didn’t have to prioritize it much, that means she took her time in the mornings, unless she had specific plans. She was far from a natural early riser, but she generally dragged herself out of bed before eight, although she remained in pajamas until well after nine. That was, in fact, how she was lounging on the couch now, feet propped up on the coffee table with a cup of coffee in one hand and a newspaper (the Vallo Gazette, printed on real paper, a rarity these days) in the other.
She hadn’t expected Emmeline, but of course her head snapped upward when she heard that familiar pop of apparition. Her best mate was, of course, always welcome here, no knocking necessary. But any pleasant surprise that might have accompanied her arrival was quickly brushed aside when she took in the sight of her. It was hard for her to ever think Emmeline Vance looked a mess, but – well, she certainly looked as if she’d had better days, and that was saying something so early on this particular day.
“‘Course we can, my love,” she replied, placing both paper and mug on the coffee table, brows furrowed with concern. She patted the spot beside her on the couch. “Come sit, yeah? You look like you might collapse.”
Emmeline had the presence of mind to take off her jacket and shoes before she came and dropped onto the couch next to Marlene. “I’m sorry for barging in like this. I hate to take over your morning with my problems, but I don’t know who else to go to.”
“Stop it,” Marlene scolded her gently. She closed the little distance between them and splayed her hand across Emme’s upper back. “You know you’re welcome here any time, day or night. And I’d be more offended if you were struggling and didn’t come to me. Tell me what’s bothering you.”
She should have come by when this all first started. Deep down she knew that. But her penchant for shouldering her burdens alone had kept her away. Well, that and her concerns that telling her woes to Marlene would result in an irreparable rift between her best friend and future wife.
“It’s Carol,” Emmeline finally admitted as she leaned into Marlene. “And Natasha.” Her stomach was already in knots from just saying it out loud. Part of her wanted to backtrack and just go hide out somewhere alone because this entire drama was humiliating and painful. “Turns out that back home, before either of them arrived here, they’d been in love with each other. Carol had apparently been dealing with it on her own when Natasha had her alternate memories, but when she got all those new memories recently, her feelings came with them.”
Marlene’s first instinct upon hearing ‘Carol and Natasha’ was to jump to the conclusion that her best friend’s fiancée had been seeing someone else behind her back, but she reigned the thought in. She knew better than that; she and Emme were on Defense with Natasha, and she couldn’t believe for a second she would partake in that. And while she and Carol might clash on occasion, she thought it unlikely on her end as well.
The situation Emme presented wasn’t much better, though. Watching someone you had feelings for struggling with feelings for someone else was hard. She’d done it herself more often than not back in their school days. It was only with age and separation that she’d gotten away from that, and it hadn’t been simple in the slightest.
“I wondered if something may be going on between the two of you,” she admitted quietly, rubbing her hand across Emme’s upper back. She had noticed they seemed less manically happy than when she’d first arrived, or even after the proposal a couple months back now, but she’d never suspected something like this. “Have you spoken about it?”
Appreciation for Marlene welled up in Emme’s chest. Her quiet tone and the comforting hand at her back was exactly what she’d been needing for weeks now. It didn’t surprise her that Mar had picked up on some of the coolness that had entered their relationship as of late, but it was still painful nonetheless.
“Once. The night she first told me everything. I’d thought she meant to break things off with me, but she just explained. And she swore that nothing would come in between the two of us. I believed her, and I trusted her to find a way to work through her feelings, so I tried to give her the room to do so. But it’s been weeks now, Mar. And I just feel her getting further away from me. Yesterday she came home and it was like she was a world away.”
Part of Marlene deeply wanted to tear into Carol herself for making Emme feel so badly. She had always been protective, and she’d trusted this woman with her best friend’s heart after seeing the way they were together. She didn’t like thinking she’d misplaced that trust. But more than that, Emme had trusted her, and now she seemed to be taking advantage of that. She could understand complex feelings – they certainly happened, she would be hypocritical to pretend otherwise – but this was clearly causing Emmeline pain. Surely, Carol had noticed that.
“You know as well as I do feelings aren’t simple, love,” she sighed, a wry little smile curling her lips as she stretched her arm out to wrap around Emme’s shoulders. “But that doesn’t excuse how she’s been treating you, regardless. Do you think…” She hesitated, trying to think of how to phrase this next bit. “Are you still expecting her to turn things around?”
Emme could feel the beginning of a stress headache at the base of her skull. She reached an arm up to undo the elastic that was keeping her hair up. She slipped the band around her wrist and shook her head softly to undo the twists in her hair. It tumbled down overtop of Marlene’s arm and Emme nestled herself in closer.
“I know. That’s why I’ve tried so hard to be patient and give her the time she needs to deal with everything. I want to believe that she’ll figure it out and come back to me. But at what point does that just make me the fool?”
“You are the furthest thing from a fool I can imagine, Emmeline Vance,” Marlene insisted. Her tone was full of finality, leaving absolutely no room to argue with that statement either. As far as she was concerned, it was a fact. This situation wasn’t Emme’s fault, and it certainly wasn’t foolish for her to count on someone she loved to be there for her. “She loves you. I’ve seen it. I highly doubt that’s gone away. Sounds like she’s just gotten herself into a mess, hm? Which, typical Danvers, honestly.”
She’d heard more than her share of Carol’s ridiculous space stories. She assumed there were plenty of other missions where things hadn’t spiraled wildly out of control, but the most entertaining always seemed to hold to that theme. And it always seemed to turn out all right.
She couldn’t help the soft chuckle that escaped her at typical Danvers, because if that wasn’t the truth. She loved Carol’s messiness, truly. Her recklessness and willingness to hurl herself into everything was one of the things that Emme loved most about her. She tried to reconcile that and reminded herself of all the times that Carol had to push things as far as she could before she snapped out of it and came to her senses. Some of the tension in her chest began to ease and Emmeline felt like she could breathe a little easier.
“Thank you. I think I just needed that reassurance.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” Marlene gave Emme a gentle squeeze. She was choosing to believe the narrative she’d spun was true. She knew Carol did love Emmeline, but she could really only hope she’d cut herself out of this web she seemed to have weaved and set everything right again. That was a superhero’s job, wasn’t it? Making things right.
“Was there something specific that got you this upset?” she questioned. She knew Emme was due at the Underground today, and it wasn’t like her to skip work, even in times of emotional upheaval – and this certainly qualified as that. “Whatever you need to get off your chest, give it to me. I promise I’ll refrain from any Jelly-Legs curses, if that helps.”
Emme slunk in deeper and raised her legs to rest on the coffee table. Marlene knew her too well to get away with not telling the full story. She heaved a small sigh then continued. “I could tell something had changed yesterday, but Carol insisted it was nothing. Eventually I just needed to get away from it all so I went upstairs. I was in the bedroom when I found a letter sitting on her night table.” She’d pulled her hands into her lap at this point and had begun idly picking at her cuticles as she spoke.
“I shouldn’t have read it, but it was just there. It was a love letter from Natasha. And I don’t- I’m positive it’s not anything recent. If I had to guess, it was probably something she wrote when they were in their world. I don’t know if Vallo sent it here, or if Carol has just been carrying it around with her. Either way, she never brought it up with me. Not once, all evening. That’s what did me in. I want to give Carol the space to work out what she needs to, but I never wanted the cost to be her hiding things from me.”
Alright, there was that initial anger spike Marlene had been leaning toward when she’d wanted to jump to the infidelity conclusion. She trusted Emme if she said it didn’t seem to be anything freshly written in Vallo, sure she would be able to tell. From her knowledge of the two of them, it didn’t seem like something they’d do, not even if they’d chosen to pursue something again – it was too sloppy. She chose to believe that wasn’t the case.
“Well, if your feeling is that something shifted yesterday, I’d think it fair to assume it was Vallo’s doing,” she reasoned. She was being generous, all for Emmeline’s sake, when really she’d like to be taking back the promise to hold back on curses. “But I think the time for tiptoeing around this and giving her space is coming to an end quickly, Ems. You can’t keep going on like this if it’s wrecking you this way. You deserve better from the woman you’re meant to marry.”
She had a point. The appearance of the letter and Carol’s mood yesterday likely weren't a coincidence. Emmeline still ached that Carol hadn’t come to her about it, but if her fiancée was nursing old wounds, then she could at least understand it better.
Emme let out a disgruntled noise and buried her face in Marlene’s shoulder. “I bloody well feel like I’m back in school again, and I hate it.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, it’s certainly not you who’s put you there.” Marlene smoothed a hand through Emme’s hair and tipped down to kiss the crown of her head. “You’re too good, babes, letting her drag you through this. How long’s it been? Least a month, yeah?”
“Nearly two.” Emme’s voice was still muffled by Marlene’s shoulder. Merlin, even saying it out loud was embarrassing. How had she let this fester for two months? With a sigh, she turned her face forward again. “You’re right. I can’t just sit back and not say anything anymore.”
Emme brought her feet back down to the floor again and scooted herself up on the couch. “But do you mind if I spend the day with you before I do? I think I just need some space to decompress first.”
Two months. Emmeline truly was the most patient woman she’d ever known. She’d have lost her temper long before then and put her foot down that whatever this shit was got sorted or she was done. But she knew it would never be that cut and dry, not with how much Emme loved Carol.
“Do you even have to ask?” Marlene scoffed playfully, smiling soft and sincere as she leaned forward to kiss Emmeline’s forehead. “We’ll be layabouts together today, how’s that sound?”
Emme laughed tiredly. “Sounds like the best day I’ve had in nearly two months.” She hugged Marlene around the waist. “Thank you.”
She cuddled there for a long moment before she sat up again. With a sly glance toward Marlene, Emme reached for the mug sitting on the table and wrapped her hands around it. A moment and a few whispered words later and the drink was piping hot again, as if it had just been poured. She was generally not all that adept at wandless magic, but she had a few tricks up her sleeves.
“I’m going to make myself some tea. Need anything else while I’m up?”
“Showoff,” Marlene teased her, watching as her mug of coffee began steaming again. Wandless magic was far beyond her purview, but she was hardly surprised her brilliant best friend could pull it off if she so desired.
She tugged gently at Emme’s shirt, coaxing her back again. She knew very well that Emme liked to keep busy when she was going through it, but she wasn’t going to allow it today. She was sure it was all she’d been doing lately.
“You’re not moving a muscle,” she said firmly, putting on her very best ‘don’t challenge me’ look. “Let me take care of you, alright? I think that’s the least you deserve right now.”
It honestly didn’t take all that much of an effort on Marlene’s part to have Emmeline falling back onto the couch once more. She thought about arguing, but a quick play-by-play in her mind confirmed it would be a losing battle without a doubt. Marlene had one of those looks about her. Emme did love her so.
“All right,” she surrendered. “Just this once. But hurry back.”