Work Text:
Bang!
Carmela Rodriguez looked up from her psychology textbook, frowning. That noise had come from inside her bedroom, and if it was her portable worldgate's spatial collapsant malfunctioning again, that was her shopping budget shot for the month. No way she'd be able to wrangle a free repair on a complimentary worldgate twice.
Somewhat to her relief, she saw a skinny fifteen-year-old redhead standing just inside the door, glaring at her. Dairine Callahan was a feature, not a bug -- not that everyone shared that opinion...
"Carmela. You wanna pick up some extra pocket money?"
"Always," Carmela said. She swirled around in her seat and flashed her most professional smile. "What do you need?"
"I need to assassinate a king."
Carmela rolled her eyes. "Madre de Dios, Dairine. You spend more than a year hunting him down like he's the last custom entutiatih made by Yuomen Doi, and you get all of a week with him before you want to kill him again for real?"
Dairine's scowl deepened. "I know!" She hopped onto Carmela's bed and threw herself back against the comforter like a pissed-off snow angel. "It's -- arrgghh!" Dairine pounded the mattress a few times. "So at first Nelaid and Miril were busy bringing him up to speed on what's happened in the kingdom since he disappeared. Probably yelling at him a lot, too, once the shock wore off." She snickered. "But Nelaid tells him we've been working together and takes him into the simulation room to show him what l learned, and I melianestuite foostoone meliamehaunanu suowenoai, which Nelaid just taught me last month. So I pull out of the star to look at them, and Roshaun..."
"Wasn't impressed?" suggested Carmela.
"Looked like I'd shat on his favorite palace rug. Said 'It seems you have found an adequate replacement in my absence, Father. She has much to learn of statecraft, but I am sure that another year will suffice for that. ' And then he transited out of the room. Nelaid looked furious, but we had some things to wrap up..."
Carmela looked back down at the chart in her textbook. Identity vs. Role Confusion, read the text one box. In the next, Intimacy vs. Isolation.
Trust Dairine to be precocious, she thought. Dairine didn't usually come to her with problems, which was just as well, since Carmela was pretty sure most of Dairine's problems would make her head explode just trying to understand them. But this was one situation Carmela could read pretty clearly.
"...going to rip him a new one, I hope," Dairine was saying. "Just because he'd never learned that particular trick! It wasn't even important, just something Nelaid thought I'd do well now that I've got the basics down, and..."
Oh, brother, Carmela thought.
"...anyway, if he thinks I'm going to step back and stop doing star work just because he has a superiority complex --"
"Hold it right there," interrupted Carmela. She slapped her book shut and held up one finger. "Dairine, let me give you some boy advice."
"I don't need boy advice," said Dairine sullenly. "I need priggish alien advice. If I need advice at all, which I don't because eventually he'll back down, probably as soon as he realizes that he can't actually expect--"
"Yes, but you don't want him to back down," said Carmela. "You want him to warm to you. Which he's not gonna do if you show him up when he's feeling vulnerable, and in front of the one person he most wants to impress!"
Dairine stared at Carmela. "Nelaid?"
Carmela rolled her eyes again, harder. "You and Nita both, it's like you're missing a gene or something. Dari, put yourself in his boots. You know and I know that he's insecure about, well, everything. Then you come along and show him..." She paused to think. "First, you break him down by showing him that he's not as special as he wants to believe. Then, you make him admire you -- what? No, he definitely admires you, Dari. He starts to see you as an equal. Then, just when he's starting to relax his sphincter a little, he messes up a spell and has to be rescued -- by you. That probably hurt his pride a little, but that's OK, because he's still king of a planet. The Guarantor thingie. Oh, except wait -- the entire time he's been gone, his dad has been teaching you everything he taught Roshaun. So if I were Roshaun, and thank goodness I'm not, and not just because he has no aesthetic eye, although he really doesn't and you should think seriously about redecorating his palace when you get a chance, I would be feeling a little useless right now."
"He's not useless!" Dairine said hotly. "He saved our planet, saved the universe, and he's-- stop laughing at me!"
Carmela just put her head down on her desk and kept laughing. "I'm gonna write a paper for this class," she said into the desk. "I'm going to get an A. Mama and Pop will freak out. Thank you, Dairine."
"I don't know why I talk to you," Dairine said. "Spot, why am I sharing my problems with someone who laughs at my pain?"
Silence was the only response. Carmela looked around for the little laptop computer that followed Dairine everywhere, but didn't see him.
Dairine sat up and whistled. "Spot!"
Silence again.
Just when Dairine's expression started to go from annoyed to worried, another bang! hit the room. Suddenly Carmela couldn't see Dairine at all: she was buried under a pile of sparkling gold drapery that began to resolve itself, amid various horrified squeaks, into a young man pushing himself away from Dairine as quickly as he could, brushing back pale hair from a flushed face.
"I beg your pardon, Dairine," he said hurriedly. "I allowed Spot to program a course that would take us directly to you. The approach taken was more direct than I had wished or anticipated."
Dairine looked even redder than Roshaun as she glanced uncertainly between him and laptop that had also appeared on Carmela's bed. "Spot?" she said. "Were you -- I'm gonna kill you!"
"You're gonna thank me," came his smug little voice.
Dairine's fist was well on its way to smashing Spot's lid when Roshaun caught and held it. He looked her in the eye. "Dairine, however you may judge the fair distribution of your own thanks, I owe mine to Spot. He appeared in my rooms as I..."
Sulked, thought Carmela.
"...sulked," said Roshaun.
! thought Carmela.
"He reminded me of the behavior that becomes a monarch. A friend." Roshaun let go of Dairine's hand and put two fists together before his chest. "I offer an apology for my failure to appreciate the reach of your achievements, which are remarkable," he said. "I offer apologies as well for the suggestion that your time with my father was not well-spent. He and my mother..."
Roshaun hesitated again. "Any light amid the darkness of this last year," he said softly, "broke in when you visited Wellakh. They would not wish you anything but welcome there. Nor would I."
Dairine cleared her throat. "Well, you couldn't stop me if you tried." she said. "Because I'm not done learning from your father, and we'd make pretty lousy partners if I didn't know how to back you up in a crisis."
Roshaun went wide-eyed. "Partners?"
"What, you thought I brought you back just to stand around and look pretty?" Dairine snorted. "Nope. You owe me at least a year or two of service, bucko. Maybe more. I haven't decided exactly how much the agonizing uncertainty adds, not to mention the damage I did to my grades by doing search-and-rescue instead of homework."
Carmela sighed. Not how I would have scripted it, she thought, but Dairine usually gets results in the end. I don't know how I'm going to work this into my paper without mentioning wizardry. "Speaking of homework," she said out loud, "I still have to get this chapter read. How about you two kiss and make up and get outta my room?"
"Working," said Spot, and winked at her before the three disappeared.