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Barbara settled one baby into her crib and looked around for the next one, only to find that they were finally running out of babies. NotEnriqué was cooing over one and Walter was nowhere to be seen. She started voicing her question of where he went off to, but NotEnriqué anticipated it.
“Where’s-“
“I told ‘im to get outta here, I can handle a couple babies on my own.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. Spent a few months pretendin’ to be one. It ain’t hard. Better go check on the boss though, he was lookin’ all moody when he left.”
“Right…” Barbara wasn’t sure if he’d want to see her right now. Heck, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to see him.
After the defeat of Gunmar and Morgana, Jim had left. She knew why, and she understood, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt letting him go. With a house that would have been otherwise completely, painfully empty, she'd volunteered her house to take care of some of the baby familiars and Walter offered to help in exchange for a place to stay. She wasn’t about to say no to help, so that’s how the two of them ended up tag-teaming the job, (NotEnriqué invited himself, but as he turned out to be a huge help, neither of them said anything about it) only interacting as needed to get things done. That was primarily the way they’d talked since…well, since Walter came back. It was all how to kill Gunmar, how to help Jim, how to deal with Merlin, how to defeat Morgana, how to take care of the babies. Their feelings for each other, whatever they were, had barely been touched upon.
“Without you, there is no world.” He’d said that to her.
And now he wouldn’t even look at her.
She left Jim’s old bedroom, now filled with cribs, both proper ones and improvised, and made her way down to the basement, turning on lights as she went. Maybe the other two didn’t need them, but until they figured out better window coverings, she was not going to put up with the dim light during the day that came in through the newspapers they’d taped in most of the windows as a temporary measure.
Well, if temporary was still the word at almost two weeks.
The upstairs bathroom was empty, so she went downstairs to check the main floor. When that proved to be just as fruitless, she went to the basement. She heard rustling down below when she turned on the light. There, she found him.
Down the stairs she went, in no hurry for this conversation. Talking feelings out with him of all people wasn’t something she was looking forward to, but if NotEnriqué was saying something about it, she probably should.
Her painting studio had been dismantled and put away and a chunk of the basement had been turned into a space for the two changelings, though Walter was probably the one who used it most of the time. NotEnriqué seemed to prefer making nests all over the house. Barbara announced herself and walked around the privacy screen they’d put up to find Walter sitting on Jim’s old bed, head in his hands.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” he growled. She still wasn’t used to how rough his voice was now, she wasn’t sure if he actually was fine or if he was being sarcastic. “Do you need me upstairs?”
“No, NotEnriqué seems to have it handled.” Barbara pulled a nearby folding chair closer and sat down across from him. An attempt at conversation that wasn’t entirely utilitarian, that’s all she had to do right this minute. “I‘ll admit, I wasn’t expecting him to be good with the babies.”
“I assure you, it’s surprising to me too.” He finally lifted his head to look at her directly. “Did you need something?”
“Not really.”
“Then why are you down here?” he asked, a slight edge entering his voice. Again, she wasn’t quite sure why.
“Just wondered if you needed anything, I guess.”
She looked around the space he’d started building during whatever time he found for himself between caring for the babies. Little was salvageable from Jim’s bedroom, so he’d made do with what looked to be random items he’d found in the basement. A box he was using as a nightstand held a desk lamp that had been bent back into shape along with a dog-eared book of short stories that Barbara recognized as hers from an English class in undergrad. His phone was sitting on top of that, looking far more scratched up than she remembered. A card table had been turned into a desk where Walter had been practicing his penmanship and he’d, unsuccessfully from the looks of it, been trying to teach NotEnriqué as well. One of her old mugs for paint water was being used as a pen caddy, which sat next to a neat stack of clean, lined paper. There was no garbage can for the used, filled pages and she hadn’t seen an abundance of them in the garbage upstairs. Maybe NotEnriqué ate them?
NotEnriqué had fashioned a hammock for himself out of some old towels and hung that from the floor joists. He seemed happy with his possessions in a disorganized mess, the shorts he’d taken to wearing all in an unfolded pile on a shelf next to a precarious stack of magazines and comic books. Walter, in contrast, had his items neatly organized in a wooden crate. She could see his wallet and keys sitting on top of the sweater he’d been wearing when the eternal night started.
“It’s been a while since I asked,” she continued. All he’d asked for outside of basic groceries was a phone charger. “I wondered if something else came up. We can add it to the list.”
“There might be something,” he admitted. “I seem to have misplaced the stylus for my phone. You haven’t seen it anywhere, have you?”
That hadn’t exactly been the kind of thing she had in mind, but she supposed it was something. “I haven’t. I’ll keep an eye out for it and I’ll add it to the list, can’t hurt to have extras.”
“Thank you.”
And suddenly it was an awkward silence between them again, without NotEnriqué or one of the babies to interrupt it.
“Have you heard from Nomura lately?” she asked.
“Yes, actually. I was in the middle of responding to her when you came down here.”
“Oh!” Good, something they could talk about. “Anything going on with her?”
“She’s sent a-“ He paused as he reached for his phone.
“Is she okay?” Barbara prompted when he didn’t continue.
“She’s fine, as always. It’s my phone,” he said, picking up the device. “Or rather, it’s me.” He tapped the screen several times, an audible click with every tap. Only on the fifth tap or so did the screen make an attempt to wake up.
Suddenly, the newly battered state of his phone screen made sense. “So that’s why you got a phone with a stylus,” she realized.
“I didn’t need it before, it was just nice to be able to use the phone in both forms. But now…”
“Right. I’ll definitely make sure we buy new ones. In the meantime, do you want me to do anything on there for you?”
“Would you?” He sounded surprised, which he really shouldn’t have been.
“Sure.” She stood up and moved to sit next to him on the bed. He shifted slightly to accommodate her, but in the end, she ended up sitting right next to him, thighs touching, her left hand resting on the mattress behind him and Walter holding her right hand, using her finger as the stylus. She could have rested her chin on his shoulder, they were in the perfect position for it.
He pulled up the photo Nomura sent him. Barbara bit back a snort of laughter. “Is that typical for her?”
Nomura had sent a selfie of her flipping off the camera while standing in front of Mount Rushmore at night.
“Very,” Walter replied as he started typing a reply.
“Don’t they have security cameras or something?”
“I’m sure they do, that wouldn’t stop her.”
“I’m a little surprised,” she said, breaking the silence as he typed something. “NotEnriqué doesn’t seem to have any trouble using a tablet.”
“I don’t think Morgana was concerned with being consistent when she created us,” he said in a clipped tone as he finished off a response to Nomura.
Barbara did a double-take at his reply. If you end up on a Bigfoot documentary, I will hunt you down and kill you myself. “Walter, you’re not serious!”
“She’ll think it’s funny.”
Sure enough, Nomura left a laughter reaction on his reply. Then a few moments later, she sent, better watch it, wouldn’t want to set a bad example for the babies
Walter frowned. “I need your help with something else. Would you mind taking a photo?”
Ten minutes later, with input from NotEnriqué, the three of them sent a picture to Nomura of baby Zelda holding a sign that read “I’m literally a baby and I can’t fucking read.”