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The Perk, Monday Morning

For this (hopefully) last day of AU children, Natalie had adopted a strategy of one kid at a time, because did everyone else realize how tiring four daughters got when pretty much all of them had some way of reading you more closely than you wanted them to? It was exhausting. And Natalie had had to take care to cover up the new bruise on her neck right below her jaw, with make up and a scarf and wearing her hair down.

But yes, breakfast was Lilith's turn. (And Peter's, but he wasn't here yet.) They'd chosen the Perk just to be away from the dorms. Nowhere on the island was private, but at least the coffee was a little better here. And who'd want to eavesdrop on two blonde girls conversing in mild tones, anyway? Not that their conversation wasn't interesting to them.

There were many things they couldn't talk about, but there were equally many they could. And getting seemingly pointless tidbits out of each other was almost a game.

[ooc: Nat is here primarily for the Wiggin(s), but the post is open!]

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"You're a busy woman this weekend," Lilith observed, stirring a plastic spoon idly through her coffee. The slight changes in Natalie's appearance had hardly escaped her notice, but being obvious about it was someone else's game.

Busy, falling apart at the seams, same thing.

"Mm hmm." Well, that wasn't something to argue against. "Looks that way, doesn't it? But it's a downside of Fandom, and I'm still making time for everyone."

"How much longer?" Lilith wondered, lingering over her coffee. Drinking it would come soon enough. "You can't keep that up forever."

Natalie fixed her with a mild look. "I was talking about the four of you."

Although she acknowledged that wasn't all she could have been referring to, easily enough.

"So, until you go away. It's not forever."

"I know," Lilith said easily. "Maybe that's what I meant."

Maybe not.

"I highly doubt that, Miss Wiggin-Adams."

The accusation included its own reason.

Saved by the bell, or at least by the entering Wiggin-no-hyphen, as Peter pushed open the door and stepped into the Perk. "Sorry," he said, walking to the table. "Just had a minor emergency to deal with."

"When don't you?" Lilith asked laconically, not really accusing him of anything.

"And you called me busy," Natalie remarked, idly, with a glance at Lilith before looking at Peter. "You haven't missed anything terribly important."

"Different kind of busy," Lilith replied. Right now was an excellent time to take a sip of her coffee.

Peter sighed at both of them, but he pulled up a chair and sat down. "Good to know," he said. "I was afraid I'd miss the first energetic shouting match."

Like that would ever happen with these two.

Maybe if someone put drugs in the water. Otherwise, no.

Natalie gave Lilith a look that suggested she got her sense of humour from her father. It was a complicated look but they were very complicated people.

She also resisted the urge to tug her scarf further up. "It's too early for shouting. We're being classier than that."

Hey, the Wiggin sense of humor was completely normal! If by 'normal' you meant 'ridiculous, dry, and sometimes a little obsessed with genitalia'.

With Lilith devoting all her attention to her coffee all of a sudden, it was Peter who had to take the conversational wheel. "Staring competition?" he hazarded. "Cordial exchange of insults?"

"A staring competition would never end."

Since Natalie suspected Lilith may also have been someone who could just skip blinking if she wanted to. Not that she thought the girl particularly needed that.

"No, we're more in the business of oblique references to things, that are definitely not actually other things."

Peter shot Lilith an amused look. "Threat warning: passive-aggressiveness," he joked.

It was Lilith's turn to sigh. "There's a vast ocean of difference between passive-aggressiveness, and finding a level of compromise from which to converse about something at least one of the parties involved doesn't actually want to talk about."

"Well, she's right about that, at least, although it's mostly semantics," Natalie added, mildly. Naturally. "Of course, I'd expect nothing less from us. But then there's also just plain not talking about something someone doesn't want discussed."

"So are there any topics up for discussion that don't need to be either talked around or ignored?" Peter asked idly. "Because this is going to be a quiet meeting otherwise."

"Well, you might think this inane," Natalie said, with only a hint of a drawl, promise, "but I'd just like to point out that she has Wiggin eyes."

It was the kind of half sentimental, half just generally fascinating thing she liked to observe.

"She's just happy I'm not a clone," Lilith deadpanned. She took a sip of her coffee that was intentionally noisy to punctuate the moment.

"There's a clone?" Peter asked obligingly.

"I'm happy because you're beautiful, and even moreso because you're intelligent." So take that, Lilith. "Yes, there's a clone. Of me and that Kate girl. Her name's Cassidy, and yes, Topher was involved."

"Of course he is," Peter said, not without sympathy. He waved vaguely at the barrista. "You're right, though. I think Team Potential Future Us did quite well here."

"Mm." She watched Lilith quietly for a moment. That classic Natalie look where you couldn't tell what she was thinking, just that it was probably something she considered important. "Well, it's kind of a comfort, isn't it?"

As much as all her children were, really, but she didn't specify.

Lilith spent the time she was being scrutinized on staring at the back of her coffee cup. Reading the writing.

She was an object, not a subject right now. She could avoid awkwardness by concentrating on something else.

"It is," Peter agreed. He managed to communicate 'my usual order' with the motion of his hands. "We are not complete such complete disasters that we can't make a decent child."

Natalie found it pretty amazing. But that was her long, long week talking. She was sure she'd be back to her usual level of confidence by whatever time it took for her to actually get some rest.

"More decent than we are, possibly," she added, wryly, anyway. And then, to Lilith, "Sorry if we're talking about you like you're not here. It's just weird that you are. But not unpleasant."

That had to always be said.

"It's fine," Lilith said, putting her coffee back down. "Actually, it's nice." She fiddled idly with the lid on her coffee. "It never hurts to hear praise from one's parents. Unless it's something else in disguise."

Which this wasn't.

The barista dumped Peter's order onto the table in front of him.

"You're right about that," he said. "But hey, we are not your grandparents."

He preferred not to think about his parents, but there he went.

"Well, we might be one set of them." Because Natalie's parents had always been fine – although as Lilith would know, maybe a little less driven than Envy and Peter, as people. "But as long as we're good, I don't care."

"Remind me never to introduce you to my parents," Peter told her cheerfully, though there was a definite undercurrent of bitterness.

"That just makes me want to meet them," Natalie replied lightly. "I'm good at telling people where they're going wrong."

Because if he was bitter, they'd gone wrong somewhere. Even though he was Peter and therefore perhaps likelier than most to complain about... various things.

Honestly, a great deal of the whining and the sociopathy and the... everything that made Peter a person most people found objectionable could've probably been avoided if his parents had actually paid him some attention and gotten him some therapy instead of writing him off early.

But that was a different conversation.

"In that case, maybe you should," Peter said cheerfully. "It'd definitely be entertaining."

"Oh, it is," Lilith affirmed. She looked faintly amused herself. "Especially with Grandmother."

"Well," Natalie replied, and yes, she looked faintly amused as well, "if memory serves right, part of the reason you're even called Lilith in the first place was to mess with your grandmother."

Ah, saint names.

"So I'm going to believe that."

"Oh, right!" Peter said, grinning. "We did, didn't we?"

He held up a hand, wordlessly requesting a high five from Natalie. Because yes, he was that petty, and... yes, after last week, he actually kind of felt like doing that sort of thing from time to time.

Apparently sex had murdered some of his insecurity. Who knew.

Well, it had been some pretty fun sex. So, guess it was deserved.

But Natalie gave him a look of 'really?'

... And then she gave him his damn high five, because it was amusing and she was tired enough to need amusing things.

Lilith let go of a snicker she hadn't actually planned on sharing with the world. "Really?"

"You've met your grandmother," Peter pointed out. "Of course 'really'!"

Sorry, Lilith, your parents were ridiculous dorks sometimes.

"We're also just not the nicest people."

That went without saying and wasn't much of an explanation.

Peter grinned, leaning back in his chair. "Who needs to be nice when you're this good?"

Look, this was the first genuinely good mood he'd been in since... well, since the last major accomplishment he'd had as Locke. He was going to milk it.

Natalie snorted. "Well, that took a turn for the smug really fast," she said. "I sincerely hope this isn't exactly what the older possible us are like."

She was guessing not.

"It's not," Lilith said dryly. "Neither of you have much left to prove."

Natalie threw Peter a wry look. "And she won't specify what that means."

"I'm almost starting to understand why Bean gets so annoyed when I refuse to release information when he wants me to," Peter admitted.

"Well, at least we can safely say we're not dead. And as far as I can tell, not too embarrassing."

Not that she thought they really had the capacity to be too embarrassing. At least as parents.

"Other than that, what I've most found out is that I'm likely to wear more makeup when I'm older."

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The Perk, Monday Morning

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