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The door from the end of the universe leads into Meg's bedroom from what should have been a very small walk-in closet. (Meg puts duct tape across the catch on the doorknob, to keep the door connected to Milliways -- simple, but she and Laura tested it very carefully and it seems to work.)

It's a short walk after a shorter phone call, from her apartment (where Carrie due back any moment) over to Alain's (where Meg spends half her time, anyway).

It's foggy in Montreal today.

Not excessively or dangerously so, but enough to make even the short hours of winter daylight not all that bright, but softly grey instead.

Which is handy, if your guest has a tendency to sparkle in direct sunlight.

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"Oui, Micheline? Meg says, stepping into the bedroom and closing the door behind her.

Alain is frowning slightly, as he comes back to where Edward is waiting.

"I'm sorry about that.

"Meg may be longer than she thinks.

"Maman has been trying to reach her about the church."

And Meg is a little too nice to hang up on her future mother-in-law.

Edward didn't appear to be bothered by the fuss. At least outwardly. His eyes lingered only briefly on the door as it was closed, before shifting back to Alain as he sat down. Very still. The kind of stillness really not given to any living creature. Only the shift of his eyes coming back to the Boy.

Maybe more critically for the lack of Meg, whose voice and thought hadn't left him still, but whose presence was at least several dozen more feet physically away. Not that it mattered all that much to any of his senses. Not that some part of him wasn't staying focused on exactly what she is staying and thinking, even now.

"There is a problem with it?"

Edited 2012-01-29 03:11 (UTC)

Alain sighs a little, as he sits down.

"It's not the one my aunts think I should be getting married in."

Not the building or the denomination.

There's a hestitation, for a moment, while Alain decides whether or not to go into it with someone he's just met. But since Edward's already heard at least some of it . . .

"Meg's not Catholic, and she's not converting, and we're getting married in her Anglican church. It . . . "

Alain pauses, thinking.

"It matter more to her? She goes every Sunday, I don't. I don't care where I marry her as long as I get to marry her and she's happy. So when we had to make that decision, we choose her church. Not mine. Why wouldn't we?

"But I have a couple of aunts who were very upset to learn this at Christmas, and they've taken their concerns to my mother and made her promise to discuss it with Meg. And Maman thinks she has a duty to do so, to her sister and her brother's wife.

"And Meg will let her say everything she wants to say, and then probably promise that she and I will talk about it again, so that my mother can say she tried.

"Because she's very kind."

If Edward were one were great expressions, his eyebrows might have risen somewhere in the middle. Maybe even further more as the Boy continued to spin out the tale, without a moments hesitation.

For a good middle portion of he wagers the why and the what of the background on that choice. Emotional reactions of two different kinds, between mothers...and Meg.

"That she is."

He does almost leave it right there. Except.

"And patient, regardless of whether the situation merits it."

"Yes.

"And I wouldn't want her not to be."

He just sometimes wishes that she didn't need to call on those particular qualities for certain things.

"On that we are agreed."

Because if Meg was not all of the things that Meg, including this two mentioned aloud, then Edward would not be in this room. Edward would never have talked to her. And she would never have had to bare through the things of his she has since then.

"That and the superiority of literature that has not been translated."

There are worse things to have in common.

Alain looks over his shoulder, back at the still closed bedroom door, and then turns back to Edward.

"May I ask you something?

"Is Meg safe there?"

In this strange bar that follows her around the city and that Alain apparently cannot follow her to?

Edward considered him. Quiet, long seconds ticking by.

Each millisecond he can count that Alain cannot.

"Why."

Edited 2012-01-29 04:38 (UTC)

Because Meg hates making people worry, and has had a tendency to downplay things in the past.

Because if something happened to her there, Alain might never even know what it was, and that thought terrifies him.

Because he can't go there to see it for himself.

Because he's trying, all the time, to figure out what to do with this huge piece of his fiancee's life that he can't completely understand or share.

Because there aren't a lot of other people he can ask.

"I'd just like your impression, if you're willing to share it."

"No."

Edward tilted his head. A small cant sideways.

"But rather in the same way a marriage can not be."
He has a mother and one sister that can attest to that.

"It is safe under certain connotations, in certain circumstances and conditions. You choose where to place your faith, and in whom. What the acceptable risks will be, while having little control over how it truly might close or open you in the long run, and the most only in how you choose to react to each new interaction as it comes."

Alain studies Edward for several moments.

It's quite the answer.

"She's a good judge of character.

"And smart.

"And very sensible."

"Very." Is a repetition. But precise. Exact. Unwavering.

Edward has had nearly three years to consider Meg's best traits. Though the best, and worst, reason to consider them not until this past year. To consider where they were enough to stand.

"No matter what time or space or universe has cast upon her."

And from what Alain has heard (and some of what he's seen), they've cast quite a lot on her.

Including the man currently sitting in his living room.

Who Alain cannot quite decide on an opinion of.

"Meg thinks very well of you."

Yes. She does. Edward is quite aware.

But that does not make him safe either.

That does not change what he is, has become, will never be able to not be. That does not change what he could do to her if his control slipped for even the briefest millisecond at the wrong time and place. Or the times, he sat before her with coal blacked eyes, and felt tried or tempted by even her existence.

It doesn't change that he would be at fault.

That he still chose to keep her after Rio.

That is just as dangerous as the others.

Perhaps, more so than them even.
Because he chose that one.

"There are few others that I-" And it is, at least Meg would know, less hesitation and more than Edward has more words, with exact meanings, to choose from.

"--respect--" His glance for a moment moved to the door. To the two other voices that never left being part of this moment, this exchange for him. "--or trust--" With near everything he could.

The price of that trust even sat in front of him uncertain, and quite opinionated. And she had kept his request. Kept the silence he'd required. Earned both that trust, and respect many times over.

"--as much as her." Beat. to clarify. "In Milliways. Or my own world."
In the millions on millions he could choose from in either.

Seven. In exact. If Alain needed a count.

"Good."

Because that's as it should be, in Alain's opinion.

Which is far less based on his view of Edward and far more based on his view of Meg.

(Who is, at this moment, completely unbeknownst to Alain, starting to extricate herself from the phone call with his mother.)

"You are very accommodating to this whole arrangement."

His little few proofs, and his great faith in Meg.

Alain turns to look over his shoulder at the bedroom door again.

It's not really a way he's ever thought of it before.

And, to be completely honest, he'd be perfectly happy if it weren't there to be accommodated.

But as it is . . .

"I wouldn't deserve her if I wasn't."

He turns back to Edward.

"Besides," he says, with a smile, "someone has to accommodate Meg, on occasion."

And he gets to be the one who does.

He gets to be the one who, when she's dealing with all that time and space and the universe cast at her, she comes home to.

It's one of the first truly telling thing he's said.

From the honest, if unknowing, admission of wishing it weren't there, as well as the acceptance of Meg's involvement in it. Both at the very same time. It's very human, and it's very real, and it might be the first thing Edward thinks he could like about The Boy that isn't a grace for Meg.

Edward snorted. Not quite refuting. It's a breath of air pressed out his nose. Agreement, instead of rebuke. A faint, very clipped, very still, movement of a nod. Only tipping down twice. "There have been more than enough who haven't."

Even one is too many, depending on how deep that one runs.

Edited 2012-01-29 21:07 (UTC)

"Oui, je sais," Alain says.

In big things and small.

There or here.

"I don't think she expects people to."

Edward would not even call it that.

Would not even say Meg thinks much of it.

"No," Edward agreed, without casting a glance toward the door. Even as her conversation was coming closer and closer to its finite point. "She requests, and accepts, and hopes more than she ever expects."

Alain isn't even sure he'd say she requests all that often.

It makes offering all the more important.

The bedroom door opens, and Meg comes back into the living room, setting the phone carefully back in its cradle on her way.

"Everything all right?" Alain asks.

"Yes, everything's fine," Meg says.

Sorry about that.

Meg touches Alain's shoulder for a second as she passes him on her way back to her seat.

"How's everything out here?"

Edward gaze, golden and calm, shifted from Alain to Meg. Watching between the two of them, as she settled, and his focused shifted once more.

His eyebrows rose just the barest, matching with there very corners of his mouth. "The same."

Though he meant more the same, rather than the same as before she left. Not that Edward was one for adding much clarification to his words unsought.

Edited 2012-01-30 01:57 (UTC)

Alain relaxed a little when he heard the door open, and a little more when Meg touched his shoulder.

He's very glad she's back.

(He also doesn't think everything's fine, where the call from his mother is concerned, but that's a conversation for when they don't have a guest.)

"We were just talking."

(Things are fine and they're not, but, yes, definitely a conversation for later, even though Edward has already heard all the details of it.)

Meg could guess at a topic.

She could even guess accurately, at least in a general sense.

But she won't.