There had been, very briefly, a moment when Laurence had hated Carol more than he’d hated nearly anyone who had come before. He’d struggled against her, when she’d pulled him through the portal, and though he hadn’t struck her, he’d been tempted to. But struggling against Carol’s grip was as useful as trying to break iron shackles with his strength alone, and when she’d let him go on the other side of the portal from Temeraire, away from where the forest wrights had been killing him, he had been unconscionably rude to her, before he’d run off for the covert, where he’d found Temeraire whole and well.
He’d apologized later that evening, of course, once he had managed to gather himself again; a brief phone call to let her know that of course she had been entirely correct, and he was sorry for his behaviour. But his behaviour hadn’t sat right with him, especially not with all she’d been through – he’d known, from their phone call on what should have been Carol’s wedding anniversary, that she wasn’t doing well.
And so it was partially to make amends, but mostly to be sure she was well, that he invited her out to dinner at the Canteen. It said something that the idea of going to a restaurant filled with anthropomorphic cats barely dinged on his radar as strange these days.
“You’re looking well,” Laurence said, once they’d placed their orders and received their drinks. “How have you been holding up?”
Carol was used to putting herself in the position of being hated. That had always been the downside of playing space cop, trying to do what was best for the greatest majority of people she could. Making those choices had made her many friends, but it had made her just as many enemies—if not more. It wasn’t a good feeling, but it was one she was used to, and it was why she’d felt comfortable taking hold of Laurence and dragging him through the portal, even as Temeraire went down on the evil sentient forest side of things.
She could handle him hating her. She’d known it wouldn’t be forever, but even if it was, she could handle it. She’d made the call that needed to be made, to get Laurence back to the husband and dragon that were waiting for them on this side, and she didn’t regret it.
She wasn’t surprised when he’d called to apologize, though. It was what he did. Laurence was a good man, and despite her insistence that he didn’t owe her an apology, that it was okay, she had accepted it when it came and gave him the forgiveness she knew he needed. Time passed, and they were on good terms, so she didn’t hesitate to accept his invitation for dinner at the Canteen. It would be nice to spend time with him now that their dire circumstances had passed and they were back in the saner, more civilized version of Vallo.
Unfortunately, self-isolation was her near-constant state lately. With Emme gone, she went through waves of ups and downs. One day, she wanted to be with all her people; the next, she wanted nothing more than to hide away from everyone. It was hard even for her to predict what would come next, and today wasn’t a bad day, but it wasn’t one of her best. It didn’t leave her in her most sociable mood.
“Fine,” she said with a shrug, picking up her drink and bringing the straw to her lips for a sip. “Kamala’s been all over me since I got back.” She peered across the table at him. “You?”
“Well enough,” Laurence said, only a little evasively, as he picked up his drink and took a sip of it. His gaze shifted toward the doors of the kitchen, as though he might reasonably expect their meal already, except that they’d only just placed their order.
“My apologies,” he said after a moment. “I do not often like to turn to matters of importance before we’ve finished eating.” Let alone before they started. He liked to keep mealtime conversations light, when he could, and jovial. But he found himself completely unable to think of any sort of pleasant topic to while away the time until they’d finished their meal. “I hope you will forgive me for being so blunt, and asking so personal a question. It is unforgivably rude, I know, and you need not answer if you do not care to, or you may end the meal if you wish. But… your house. Do you wish to remain in it? I know that it must contain memories of Emmeline, many of them good, and I would not tear you away from them, should you care to hold on to them. But I’ve worried for you, too, worried quite dearly, and I…”
He stumbled to an awkward halt, not wanting to seem to be offering criticism on how Carol carried her grief. He was not sure he wouldn’t do the same, were Lan Xichen to leave. He’d never had very much experience, talking about personal matters with anyone.
“I am sorry,” he said, after an awkward beat. “That was clumsily done.”
Carol wasn’t completely unaccustomed to awkward, fidgety Laurence. They’d been friends long enough now that she’d seen him in many of his awkward phases of adjusting to more modern socialization. Society in the nineteenth century was a whole different ballgame than it was nowadays; there were different, much more formal expectations that most people didn’t stand by in the twenty-first century.
And maybe it was rude to perk up when her friend was obviously fumbling his way around some particular topic he wanted to discuss, but she couldn’t help straightening up with interest. She was slightly awestruck that he wasn’t completely red in the face. She would never understand how any productive conversation had been had back in his day when he was so petrified to ask or say anything that anyone could perceive as rude. It had to be exhausting.
The crux of it all seemed to be asking her if she wanted to stay in her house, which, in her opinion, wasn’t a rude question at all. It was a fair question she’d been asking herself for a while now. Part of her had desperately wanted to run away since the moment she’d gotten the notification and realized that the empty bed she’d woken up to meant that her wife was gone, not simply off to SIV for an early work day.
She decided to have some mercy on him; she didn’t tell him, for the millionth time, that he didn’t have to apologize and instead answered the question. “I don’t know. If it were just me, I’d have run away already. I’d go live on Lawson’s ship and never think twice about it. But the house has also been Kamala’s home for over a year. I haven’t wanted to uproot her again while she’s dealing with college.”
Laurence nodded as she spoke. It all made a great deal of sense, especially with Kamala. She was an adult – but only a new one, by this world’s standards, and he preferred this world’s standards to childhood than his own.
“I was wondering,” Laurence started, and then stopped. “That is, I’ve spoken with Lan Huan and Temeraire. And we would all be glad, very glad, if you – the both of you – chose to take rooms at the Covert. Temeraire’s been studying for college as well; I think Miss Khan and he could help one another in their studies. And the Covert has a library as well, which Miss Khan would have full access to.” He tried not to think of the Imperial Robes on display in the library. “The Covert was meant to house hundreds, and it has been very empty with only Lan Huan and I there, and the animals.”
Temeraire came indoors sometimes, when he was in his human form, but he’d never quite grown accustomed to being indoors, and Laurence suspected that he still sometimes felt anxiety over it.
He did not say that he hoped that Carol would benefit from the forced, adult company, or how much more difficult it would be to self-isolate. And he did not want to say the next, but if he didn’t, he would feel like he had deceived her, asked her to come under false pretenses. He looked at his hands, fingers folded together atop the table. His knuckles were white from how tightly he held them.
“And it has become increasingly clear to me that I cannot protect Temeraire.” When the darkness had fallen more than a year ago, it had been his inability to protect the dragon that had cost him his eye. And then… He tore his thoughts from the events of the week before. He could not breathe if he thought too long on them. “I hope – though you are not obligated to, and the invitation would still stand, would still be very enthusiastically offered if you refused – that you might help me protect him from future threats. It is… It is not a requirement.”
Carol raised her eyebrows in surprise. Of all the directions she could have imagined Laurence taking with this conversation, this wouldn’t have even come to mind. Her top guess was a gentle lecture on keeping herself away from everyone who cared about her. She knew he was concerned when he called to check on her on what would have been her wedding anniversary. And, in fairness, she hadn’t been at her best that day; she’d struggled to put on a good face, even for Kamala.
But it was what it was. Emme was gone; there was no bringing her back, and Carol kept moving forward. It wasn’t the decades she’d hoped for—the someday that she’d spoken to Laurence about when he was only working up the nerve to propose to Lan Xichen—but she remembered the time they had. She accepted there was nothing she could do to bring her back. She’d gone through her phase of wishing she could raze this world to the ground, and now she was just resigned.
This was an unexpected idea but an interesting one. When Laurence went on to explain that part of his motivation was more protection for Temeraire, her smile went soft. She understood that instinct; Temeraire was like his kid, just like Kamala was like hers. The length of their relationships was different, but the sentiment was the same. Carol knew she would be losing her mind if something had happened to Kamala and she had been forced to walk away from her. The fear was fresh, and it wasn’t the first time Temeraire had been hurt. Of course he was looking for whatever help he could find.
“I think that might be good for us,” she agreed after a moment of quiet consideration, drink in her hands, idly turning the straw before she took a sip. “I love the house, but without Emme there, it isn’t the same. It’s too much space for just the two of us and the pets. You wouldn’t mind me bringing in two Flerkens and a housecat, right?”
“I think the menagerie that is already there would mind more than the rest of us,” Laurence said after a moment. “But they will be easy enough to convince, I think. The place is big enough that they need not see one another, much, if they do not care to, and Blackwell has always liked other animals.” It was the cats that might have more trouble adjusting, but as he said, the place was big enough that it was possible they wouldn’t even notice.
“But I’m glad you’ll come,” he said, and, after a moment’s consideration and a brief, internal debate over whether or not it was his place to say anything, added, “If you do not wish to give it up, you should keep the house.”
Carol nodded. She would have to run it past Kamala since it would be uprooting her life, too, but she liked the idea of being with others again. She had been by herself for such a long time and didn’t want to be alone anymore. She’d been alone barely two months since she’d gotten here and intended to keep it that way. A few more people and beasts in her living situation didn’t sound like a bad idea.
“I could,” she agreed. “Pepper and Tony bought it outright for us, and it’s mine. But I don’t know if I see a point in keeping the house that was supposed to be for our future family for just me and Kamala. It’s way too big and reminds me of Emmeline no matter where I go. I have enough memories of her without hoping to see her turn the corner any second. At least if I sell it, I’ll have a little nest egg for the next time this happens.”
There was no if about the next disappearance in her mind. Only when. She would love to be proven wrong, but coming up on her third year here, she wasn’t counting on that happening.
Laurence grimaced. He tried not to think about what might happen if Lan Xichen or Temeraire left him, or worse, if he left them. He’d seen Temeraire, a Temeraire from eighty years in the future, long after Laurence’s death, and knew that the two of them continued to live together long after Laurence had taken his last breath after several happy decades of living together, but he knew that those futures weren’t set in stone. There’d been the future, too, where Lan Xichen had died young, and left Laurence alone. He hadn’t yet seen one where one of them returned home and left the other behind, but that didn’t mean it was an impossibility. Things changed too rapidly, too unpredictably, for there to be any one future for all of them to count on.
He nodded. “It may be nice to have something set aside for Kamala’s future as well,” he added. Perhaps they couldn’t guarantee a future together, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t plan for one.
“Yeah,” Carol agreed. That was really all she had left here to worry about—Kamala and her future. She didn’t want to leave her without security and something to fall back on if she was taken away, like so many of the people they loved already had been. Selfishly, she hoped that if Kamala disappeared, she’d disappear with her so she wouldn’t have to face this grief again.
After a moment, she added, “Thank you for asking us to stay with you, even if it’s only for Temeraire’s sake.” That was a joke and accompanied with a small, crooked smile. He had already admitted to worrying for her, so she knew her power wasn’t the only reason, even if it may have been the tipping point for the invite.
Laurence focused on her sharply, but it did not take any great level of observation to realize that she was only teasing him, and he managed something of a smile in return. He did not need to protest further that that had been the least of his reasons, only the one that had tipped him over into the decision of asking her.
“I hope that you and Kamala will accept, once you’ve had time to talk it over,” he told her. “We would all of us be happy to have you two.”
“I’m sure she’ll be all over it,” Carol assured him. She knew her kid, and Kamala was enamored with dragons. Living with Temeraire would be a dream come true for her; having a built-in dragon study buddy would just be a bonus.
The next moment, the waiter approached with their food. The subject swiftly changed to less serious matters as they started eating, but it lingered in her mind through the chitchat. Living at the covert didn’t sound like a bad idea at all.