lukeoutbelow | (no subject)

(no subject)

Stiff after the long drive, Lisa rotated her head on her neck and stretched kinks out of her back on the walk to the little cafe where Arnold had wanted to meet her. It was bitterly cold, but she wasn't too bothered. She had her green wool jacket. Ethically sourced, it hardly bore saying, she knew something about everyone and everything involved from the sheep and alpaca to the young woman who'd applied the buttons, and tailored expertly to her frame. It had a certain military flare and while Lisa couldn't condone just about any military she knew well, she had to admit it looked good on her.

"Just a tall chai, please. 'Lisa' is fine." She found a stool, grateful this place was sleepy just now, and checked her designer watch. He might be caught up in a project, or just met an unusually large and fluffy dog. It'd hardly be the first time. She smiled with fond resignation, thinking back.

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Hand-kisses are acceptable in public, she's long decided. When they'd met she would have preferred even lingering hugs to be done in private, but you marry someone this free with affection some compromises should be considered.

She stiffens hearing the vow. There's almost a sound, like drums - no, her heartbeat, and... she remembers something. A weight on her body, a sense of the metal wrapped around protecting her and bearing her up on two towering legs... a sense of being trapped, and of sudden grief, and resolve. The voice of a young man over the radio, soft and defeated.

I've been captured. My airship was ambushed and I was taken by force. Korra refuses to release me unless we back down and leave the city.

Listen to me. If you try to take Republic City the Avatar will never let me see you again. And I refuse to live that way. Forget the United Republic, we have our empire! We have each other! Let's go back home and get married! The only thing that matters is that we're together for the rest of our lives.

Lisa comes out of it, blinking and disoriented, and covering her mouth with her hand. Who was that young man? Why did it ache so much to hear him say it? "Wh-what... I think I had better sit down."

"Lisa?" She comes back to Arnold, holding her arms and looking at her worriedly.

"What is it? What's wrong, love?"

He pulls out the chair for her instinctively. "Sit, sit. What happened?"

She folds into the chair and puts her hands to the sides of her head, forcefully enough to start to disorganize her bun. For a moment Lisa had loved that young man, whoever he was. There had been such a strong feeling of wanting him to be okay, and finding him impossibly naive, and... it had come out of nowhere. Lisa presses her fingers into her scalp, forcing herself not to cry.

"I think-" Stop. Stop. She hates to speak with her voice breaking. Lisa swallows and takes some deep, measured breaths. Looking back up at Arnold she is calmer, even with distress in her eyes. "I think that was a numbered episode."

Arnold folds himself into a kneel in front of her, waiting anxiously but patiently for her to recompose herself. The distress in her eyes brings his hands to hover anxiously (Lisa never looks like this, she's always so strong, its wrong, its wrong its wrong) near hers.

"Oh no. Oh love, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean..."

Before she'd fallen for Arnold Lisa had dated around a little, or rather evaluated many people and found her standards too high for most, and that the others ended up unsuitable sooner or later. Girlhood crushes notwithstanding she's never loved anyone else. Remembering the kidnapped young man pleading over the radio feels like cheating, even as she insists to herself he belongs to someone else. She doesn't know a single thing about him.

Meanwhile, the man she actually loves is working himself into a frenzy. Lisa gets another deep breath, pulls herself together, and covers his hands with hers. "It's all right. I know you wouldn't do that on purpose. You didn't know it would happen."

Arnold, for his part, was very much a believer in One True Love, and he treats Lisa accordingly. He calms as she does, turning his hands to hold hers and squeeze.

"I know, but I feel guilty. I did not want you invovled in this mess either, love. Was ... it a bad memory? I have not had any yet myself, but Liam and some of the others have said that they can be... very nasty."

"It was bad enough, but I'm all right," she says, and jerks her chin from Arnold to the other seat at the little table. If he lets her go long enough to sit she'll wrap one hand around her tea and extend the other on the table. Lisa looks at him, gauging what she should say.

Some of it would take too much explanation of things she doesn't really get herself. It would hurt him to say that was my fiancee, though of course he wasn't hers...

"There was a very young man calling me for help after someone kidnapped him. They were demanding something as ransom. He wanted me to agree to it." Put like that it's very prosaic, wasn't it? Lisa hates the thought of giving in to a hostage-taker, but if it had been Arnold...

Well trained by now he obediently moves to the seat, and wraps his free hand around the one she reaches out to him.

"Oh Lisa-love. It could be worse, you're right but that is a terrible thing to start with. But I'm sure, the you that I fell in love with here, is the same spirit as the you in that world, and you would have made the right choice."

Lisa takes a swallow of her tea without tasting it really, just the heat and the sweet burn down her throat. It's bracing. She lets out a sigh.

"There was no right choice. They didn't want money." She has a better sense of what money means to people less fortunate than her than, say, Liam, but that doesn't mean it's much more than trivial to her. "They wanted me to back down and leave the city to them, or I would never see him again." Historically she has not been pleased when her efforts are barred from a city. Much of America is unkind to efforts like her company's.

I refuse to live like that, her financee had said. Lisa has an unpleasant feeling that the sentiment, for all that she had loved him, is not mutual.

"Oh no." Arnold's hand around hers is warm and reassuring and he squeezes.

"The hardest choice of all. A life, or your principles."

He is quiet for a while then.... "If I were that young man, I would have wanted you to chose your principles. Every time. It's what I love about you. That you're so very, very strong."

It had been a moral imperative to be there, Republic City. Whatever that was. "They would have imprisoned him, I think, and left me no recourse."

A city run by kidnappers and hostage-takers, with the police doubtless colluding with them. It sets that cold anger burning in her. There's nothing she can do, she reminds herself. That isn't really her.

Lisa lays her other hand over Arnold's. She doesn't like to show a whole lot of affection in public, even if it doesn't seem like anyone's watching. "Oh, sweetie. Sometimes I think you're too good for me."

"Oh Lisa, that is a horrible choice! It must have hurt your past self so."

He smiles back at her fondly.

"I am sure it is the other way around."

It's thanks to him that she's been able to live as she has. He could change away from her in spite of his vow, it could mean less to him. She has to try to be honest while he is here.

Deliberately she chooses her words. Not I this time. "She loved that young man. He loved her. They were going to get married."

Arnold flinches visibly, and then his jaw sets and his eyes flash, and he brings his other hand (the one with the marriage ring) across to lay on hers.

"I am not surprised. I... I am jealous, yes. But Lisa is my wife, whatever your other self might have been. Maybe the self I was had a wife, but I don't care about that. I married you, and that choice I would make again and again." He grins at her wryly, the flash of possessiveness fading.

"I suppose I will get used to being jealous"

Arnold isn't like this about her handful of male friends or close coworkers. It's a little concerning, not a side of him she's seen much before. It really is just as well that it seems to take Lisa a very long time to see anyone as attractive in more than a clinical sense, let alone want to act on it.

It is strange to imagine an elf with her husband's face marrying someone unknown. Uncomfortable. Arnold is constantly pleased with people, unstintingly liking them, and they are often apart, but she does not doubt his faithfulness.

"Try not to puff your chest too much, love," she says dryly. "Or refer to me in the third person. There isn't anything to fear. I don't love someone simply because some other lifetime did, even if he were here and not a voice on the radio." She had loved him, and she is concerned for him and what this other her had done. But she doesn't love him.

He ducks his head shyly "Sorry. I think some of that might be him, as well. Elves are apparently faithful for life. I know that whoever this man was he is in your past, and so... but irregardless, I love you now, and it isn't whoever I was in the past who tells you 'forever', no matter what might have been."

"I hope not. I did just tell you that I didn't marry an elf." Lisa has heard that most of the Numbered are quite young. This seems to be one of the few areas where that's an advantage - they aren't likely to have to negotiate a subject like this.

She hopes she doesn't meet the young man herself.

"We can't worry too much about these other lives and everything they got up to. It's all too far away."

"That's what I love about you" He smiles at her, "Always so practical. You keep my feet on the ground and my heart light."

He hopes that too, even as he hopes he never learns if his other self had a wife.

"Well, I suppose we'll deal with things as they come then. If we have to, we can both just leave the boundaries and stay outside. Thorir told me he wrote notes to himself, I can do the same - that way, we'll know to keep an eye on Liam"

"And you always know how to flatter me," she retorts softly.

Lisa considers unhappily. Arnold wants her to stay, and truly, she can understand why and see the draw, and yet. "This promises to be very interesting, but I can't stay to find out. It would be irresponsible." And she's not sure she wants to know more or be more like this other-Lisa, and risk knowing her fiancee. "I will visit. You can talk to me or come home whenever I'm available. But, Arnold... It's better if I don't live here."

She knows the effect she has on her 'boys'. They are more careful around her, and - rightly! - anxious not to disappoint. But they are also more restricted. If Liam is growing up he should be let to grow up.

"I only tell the truth" He retorts and cannot help the flash of disappointment, although he nods.

"Alright" He says wistfully. "If you think so, then I won't argue. It isn't as if I can't visit often, and you the same. Liam probably wouldn't want us both here, anyway. He'll get annoyed with me soon, just watch."

And then he smiles, because this is Valentine's Day, and Lisa should be smiling. "Besides, we'll always have Skype" He drawls at her.

They could have been a power couple like no other.

"He can get used to it," she retorts mildly. "If it bothers him that much he has the option of moving out. Just don't let him kick you out. It's the family's house."

Lisa shakes her head fondly. "Oh, you. Of course we've still got Skype. I'm not out of your life so easily." She smiles crookedly, one corner of her mouth curving up more than the other. "Let's go somewhere a little more private. I need a better look at your ears."

They are too awesome to be allowed to exist in the same place for long.

"I will make sure to tell him. I do believe he has a place of his own, actually - which I am sure he will remember soon once he gets tired of having me underfoot."

Arnold laughs and gets up to offer her his arm with a grin. "Of course, whatever milady wishes. Home? Or shall we go out?"

Inevitably there would have been holding hands while covered in the blood of enemies. Glee over a giant spirit energy cannon. Swords. It would be unfair to outshine all the other characters.

She rises with a grace barely touched by her ankle twinging and delicately lays her hand on his arm. "I think I'm a little tired from the drive." In itself that is an act of trust. Lisa's not in the habit of admitting to weakness. "Unless you know somewhere too good to pass up, I'm just going to see what Teagan did to the house."

Exactly. It simply wouldn't do!

"Of course" He smiles and escorts her, pleased that she feels like indulging his occasional playful wish for courtly manners. "I have a nice bottle of champagne in the fridge that we can share."

"That sounds wonderful," she admits, allowing him to steer her out. Though, outside she'll want to go to her car.

"And you'll need to tell me your pulses, sweetheart. I need to know if it's gone beyond ears and territoriality. I'll need to know when it does." She's going to be disappointed when you get a friendly doppleganger and don't tell her that same day.