The Perk, Monday morning

[glacial_queen]

After getting Hannibal's message about having a new child show up on the island, Karla had wasted no time chartering a portal to get to Fandom. Portalocity, however, had managed to waste plenty of her time, accidentally sending her through a portal with both a half-day layover and the wrong destination. While the dimension of blue had a very lovely Fandom, that was most definitely not the Fandom Karla had been aiming for. After yet more time arguing with customer service about whether or not this was the Fandom she'd intended all along and then a very long, personal groveling session when they realized which account they'd messed up, Karla was finally where she'd meant to be...two days late.

Back home, Warren was already pitching a fit in his polite and soft-spoken-yet-somehow-terrifying manner that involved a level of businesspeak and legalese that Karla didn't entirely understand yet generally made corporations roll over and show their stomachs. It was impressive and normally, Karla would have loved to watch. But she apparently had a daughter to meet.

Coffee anyone? she sent in a mass text to whomever she thought might be around.

[Open for fellow parents and small children alike! Pings to be picked up after I wake up, though SP through the workday.]

Comments

[puppy_fair]

Zack wasn't a parent, and didn't have a small child today. What he wanted was to have something to help him wake up after a relatively sleepless night.

When Zack Fair not only didn't notice an old friend when walking right by her, but also failed to hit on the barista when he placed his order, you knew he was tired.

"And extra, extra sugar," he mumbled. Mostly. It was kind of interrupted by a yawn. "Lots, please."

Because he was pretty sure they couldn't just scoop extra caffeine into the coffee. Heck, he wasn't even sure if it would do anything for him in the first place.

[future_sandworm]

Of course Leto would stop by. Not only would be never want to miss a chance to see Karla, and now he had a girl in hos who definitely wanted to meet her too.

"Mother!" Helena called, waving. Leto looked at her, amused, before tidning his gaze to Karla and grinned.

[glacial_queen]

Karla would never, ever put conditions on when she got to see Zack again. In fact, the only reason it took her as long as it did to respond was because she needed a moment to blink and make sure that she was actually seeing him and not some random doppelganger.

"Zack?" she asked, half-rising from her seat. "Zack Fair?"

[glacial_queen]

Karla had one major rule when dealing with alternate children: they were to never, ever feel unloved or unwelcome, no matter how surprised she was to see them and who their alternate parent might be. So her arms were spread for a big hug before she even properly registered who was following the little girl in.

"Hello, darling, come and greet me properly," she said, then turned a smile towards Leto. "I'm so sorry to be late. Transportation was ridiculous."

This pairing, at least, she could understand easily enough.

[puppy_fair]

Zack blinked. His coffee wasn't even ready yet, but he'd forgotten about it entirely by the time he'd turned around and recognized the owner of the voice saying his name.

It would be there later, right?

"... Karla?"

He stared kind of blankly for a few seconds while his brain caught up with his mouth, and then he blinked and broke into a little laugh.

"Karla!"

A FRIENDLY FACE. HI.

[glacial_queen]

Hopefully he was awake enough to catch her because Karla was launching herself at him for a giant, squeezy hug, dammit.

"Zack, oh my goodness, I've missed you!"

[puppy_fair]

Hey, regardless of the situation, Zack was SOLDIER. He could catch pretty much anything if it had launched itself at him with no warning, and hugs were no exception.

He did stumble back a bit and clunk sword-first against the counter when Karla made contact, which was new, but he was still healing after the whole... five years being dissected under an evil mansion... thing, so he could probably be forgiven a step back to compensate.

"It's been, what, basically forever?" He grinned and gave her a squeezy hug in turn. "Oh man, it's good to see a familiar face around here, hi!"

[future_sandworm]

So could Leto. He wrapped an arm around Karla's shoulders to give her a hug.

"I arrived yesterday myself. Hannibal was kind enough to look after Helena."

"The cats wouldn't play with me," the girl informed her mother.

[glacial_queen]

"At least one forever," Karla declared, noting the step back but not making an issue of it yet. Lots of things could change over the years. "Possibly as many as three, or so it feels. It's good to see you, too, darling. Are you living back here again?"

[glacial_queen]

"We'll have to give them something nice as a thank you." Karla leaned up to offer Leto the kiss of greeting while wrapping the little girl--Helena--in a tight hug. "Did you chase them?" she asked with the full knowledge of motherhood and cat-companionship behind her.

[puppy_fair]

"Yeah," Zack replied, giving her another squish for good measure before setting her back down and straightening up again. "Ino and I both came back a couple of months ago. We've been living in that apartment upstairs from the theater."

It had been...

Well.

Things were Complicated.

[glacial_queen]

"Ino's back, too?" Karla asked, brightening further. "I'll have to see if I can't bug her before I head home tonight. It's been too, too long for the both of you."

She took a step back, giving Zack a long, sharp once-over that catalogued all the signs that he was Not Exactly Doing Great.

"Oh darling," she sighed. "Looks like it's been too long indeed. Come sit with me for awhile?"

[puppy_fair]

Zack's first reaction was... to shrug his shoulders a little, as if that was somehow going to convey that it wasn't so bad as it could be, really, and she didn't have to worry.

His second reaction was to nod, and smile - always with the smiling, no matter what - and look back toward where she'd been sitting.

"Yeah... actually, that sounds great. We've got catching up to do, right? What have you been up to?"

Reaction number three was to deflect. Always deflect.

[glacial_queen]

Oh, Zack. Even if Karla had been dear friends with the boyos from the Room of Emo Deflection, she was a mother now. You've never seen deflection until you talked to a toddler about having clean up her room. Or a teen about what they were thinking?!

"Oh, you know," she said, leading him back to the table. "Being Queen of Glacia, mother of four, serving in the First Circle of the Dark Court. And you, darling? What have you been up to? I didn't think you planned to come back to the island after you left."

[puppy_fair]

"I didn't," Zack admitted a little awkwardly. "But we can get to that in a minute. You can't mention something like having children and not tell me about them!"

Karla, you handed him such an easy out on that one. Kids were a way bigger deal than years of painful captivity and then cheating fate from there.

[glacial_queen]

Oh but she could! She'd totally used the children as conversational bait because she was the worst. And also a Black Widow. Which many people considered to be 'the worst.'

"I'll tell you what," she said, so sweetly butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, "we'll go back and forth and answer a question for a question, huh? Then we can catch up at the same time! Besides, it'll take me at least a little while to get out all the baby pictures!"

That's right Zack. There were baby pictures on the line here.

[puppy_fair]

... Cheater.

"Oh. Um. Okay." Zack fidgeted a little. And then glanced back toward the counter. "I forgot my coffee. Do you mind if I...?"

Spoiler: He was planning on grabbing it and talking himself out of making a break for the door.

[glacial_queen]

If you weren't cheating, you weren't trying.

"Oh don't worry about it, darling," Karla said, going to lay a hand on Zack's arm. "I've got it." And his coffee came zooming over, Craft ensuring that not a precious drop was spilled. "Here you go! Now we have all the time for chatting!"

[puppy_fair]

Zack... had forgotten that Karla could do that. He blinked, and then gave her a sheepish little smile that hopefully detracted slightly from the way his arm tensed just the slightest bit under her hand.

... Which, when you had that much muscle, was probably hard to miss anyway.

"Yeah, I guess we do." He reached his other arm up to scratch at the back of his head. "Okay. So... what do you want to know, then?"

[glacial_queen]

Karla was just full of ways to thwart people surprises.

"Well, let's start with after graduation," she suggested, removing her hand. "I went home and started a civil war. You?"

[puppy_fair]

"Never actually graduated," Zack replied, smiling wryly. "I went home and got back to work doing... you know. SOLDIER stuff. Though there was a rogue SOLDIER and there were some angry Wutai remnants after the war... Mostly I guess they had me training new SOLDIERs and running the occasional monster extermination mission or training simulation."

It had been a while. Anything that wasn't hugely traumatizing had been kind of a blur.

"You started a war?"

[glacial_queen]

"That doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd enjoy," Karla sympathized. She knew Zack would be excellent at training youngsters and recruits, but the boy she remembered would rather have been out in the thick of things, fighting monsters and keeping people safe.

"I did," she said, giving her coffee a humorless smile. "My uncle had my parents killed so he could install a Queen of his own choosing when I was a girl. After I graduated and made the Offering to the Darkness, I went home to take the throne back. It was an ugly, brutal war, but the things he was doing..." She shook her head. "He had to be stopped."

[puppy_fair]

Zack just gave his shoulders a shrug in reply to her observation. She wasn't wrong, after all, and while his conversational skills had gotten a workout when it came to the one-sided sort over the past several months, he still wasn't entirely sure what to do when somebody was talking truths at him outside of his own head.

"But you stopped him," he said, instead. She was infinitely easier to talk about than he was. He could appreciate the opportunity to let his mind mend that the breaks in the conversation afforded him, too. "You'd said that you were Queen of Glacia, right?"

[glacial_queen]

"But we stopped him," Kathy said. "The war lasted for six months. In the end, he did something so horrible that most of his supporters defected to my side. Some of the things he tried..." She lost the thread of her narrative, gaze going off into the distance, about a thousand miles away. It lasted only a moment, then she came back to herself with a start and gave him an apologetic smile. "War by itself is awful and civil wars are worse. But when you've got a man ruthless enough to do anything to stay in power..."

Well, Zack could probably figure it out on his own.

"How long did they keep you on training duty?" she asked. "And what was Angeal up to while you were effectively benched?"

[puppy_fair]

Zack gave a solemn nod, and then kind of swallowed and tried a game smile on for size.

"Yeah, I can imagine. And, uh... Angeal's dead," he said, carefully. "He... I mean, he gave up, before I ever left the island. Put me in a position where..."

He gestured around incoherently with his coffee.

"I had to kill him. He didn't give me a choice."

The word 'coward' had come to mind on more than one occasion. But only to mind. Zack cared too much about Angeal to ever say it aloud, even if he had put him in that position. Hell, he felt terrible for thinking it.

"The sword. This sword. It was his."