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xp_logs(very backdated) Emma lends her talents to helping Darcy repair her mental shielding, with Doug acting as a bridge in the connection.
“So I'm not sure what you want to look at first. How the room works, or working on my psychic shielding." Darcy gave Emma an uncertain smile, fingers winding around a lock of hair nervously. "In theory, my room's similar to The Box once my door is shut. Psi-powers work inside the room, but don't extend past them, and powers outside the room can't come in. In practice..." She shrugged. "Time was short, so we made sure that my powers didn't extend past the shut door and called it good enough for the immediate future."
Emma looked around her at Darcy’s room, which looked like a fairly standard Mansion suite. “Probably easiest to test the technology first,” she said. “The Box has been around a long time now, so I’m familiar with it. If your room is similarly shielded, I can test that out fairly quickly.” She smiled at her Knight. “Doug, darling, perhaps you could close the door for us.”
"Of course." Doug had spent a fair amount of time in the room, and his power didn't exactly lend itself to reaching outside of a space, so he was more than happy to help, especially if it helped Darcy feel more safe and secure. He latched the door and waited to see what he might be needed for next.
"You should still be able to read Doug and I just fine, but do you mind testing to see if you can say hello to... Haller, maybe, or even Charles? A light attempt should just give you resistance, but force... again, in theory, the walls will tell me. At least from the outside directed in. In practice, abruptly shutting off the connection gave me a vicious headache that I wouldn't want to repeat."
~So I can talk to you…~ The brush of Emma’s mind against Doug and Darcy’s was gentle, almost soothing, obviously considerate of Darcy’s concerns around telepathic intrusion, ~but… ah interesting!~ Emma sent her telepathic probe out again, felt the push back against it, like a strike into water that softened, slowed and ultimately stopped the probe before it reached anything outside the walls. Emma’s power skittered around the walls of the room, looking for a place to escape but even the seams of the doors had been sealed in such a way that the probe couldn’t get through. “Not quite like the Box,” she said aloud. “Do you want me to try a brute force attack on it, or would that ring your head like a bell?” she asked Darcy.
"Maybe after, if you don't mind? Then if it does ring me, I can just take my migraine meds and pass out." Darcy's eyes widened for a second. "Oh heck, manners! Please, have a seat. Whatever you need to do to be comfortable for this." She took a seat on her bed, scooting over to make room for Doug automatically. "I was thinking for my shields something like computer firewalls? That's why I wanted Doug here. Extra help for building."
Emma drew a chair towards her, sat down gracefully. “Shields are…” Emma started, then paused for a moment. “Shields are often very personal,” she finally said. “I mean, there are some fairly basic techniques I can teach people that set up a standard level of psi-shielding. Keeps surface skims out of your head, stops you projecting under stress and so on. But once you want something more robust than that, it often helps to start to make them more personalised. Stronger shields require more of your mental capacity, at least to start with, and that is generally easier to maintain if you are making something that your mind easily defaults to. Mine look like this.” Emma reached out for a second, deposited a picture in Darcy and Doug’s heads, a shifting diamond labyrinth, constantly shaping and moving in different directions, all false avenues and twisted perspectives. “Because diamonds are my best friend, obviously,” Emma grinned. “So if thinking of your shields as a computer firewall is what you automatically think of them as, then that is probably the approach to take. It would seem appropriate for your power-set.”
Darcy nodded in understanding. "I used the suite before as my basic shielding. It was easy enough to visualize shutting and locking the door to keep my mess in my own space," she explained. "And Jean helped me clean it up after the disaster Laurie left behind, but it never felt as secure after. Firewalls... traps... something to help stave off that sort of interference, or at least alert me that it's happening. Maybe... Doug could switch some of the language they're coded in?" She tilted her heads towards him as she asked. "Something most people can't read, maybe. I..." she bit her lip. "I trust Doug enough to let him do that, and I trust you enough to guide us because Doug trusts you."
In a way, trusting another person inside your head could be even more intimate than a physical relationship. Doug reached out with the nanite hand to squeeze Darcy's, letting the 'friendos' add their own appreciation of her. "Firewalls make a lot of sense," he agreed. "Layered defense, compartmentalization..." He was probably babbling a bit. "...so Emma uses me as a bridge? I'm good with that."
"That was what I was thinking. We know the nanites can usually get my attention when I'm actively using the technopathy, and I don't think I can just surround my mind with an electric fence, even if it would be nice to watch someone drop and drool if they decided to poke past my surface thoughts uninvited." Darcy's smile was full of teeth.
Emma’s returned an equally sharp grin. “Don’t let me using Doug as a bridge make you think I’m not an official genius when it comes to engineering,” she admonished lightly. “But between a technopath and a nanite-wielding omni-linguist, I’m willing to admit that there’s probably a few technological nuances where you both might outpace me. Just a little,” she held diamond-tipped fingernails a few millimetres apart and her smile was much softer now. “But between the three of us, I think we should be able to devise something that more effectively utilises your own and Doug’s powers to help bolster your shields. Let me know when you’re ready and we can move into your mindscape.”
"I've no doubt you can figure out how to accomplish anything you put your mind to doing," Darcy admitted before taking a few deep breaths and relaxing against Doug's side. "Okay, feel free to come in."
She kept her breathing steady as they transitioned to her mindscape, letting out a low whistle as she took in what was, in the waking world, a shared space with Terry, full of light and very clean. "I knew, academically..." she started, voice shaky as the deep cracks down the walls and broken windows were revealed. "I knew–tha-that damage had been done with the feedback loop with Vi. But I didn't know. Not that it was this bad. Just that it was... not good. Not something I could ignore for long. So, what do you think? We scrap it, or we use it as a false defense?" The door to Terry's side didn't manifest in her mind, but her own door had deep gouges running down it. "When Laurie fucked it up, it was mostly just... slimy and gross, like it needed especially deep cleaning."
"I don't know as much as Emma, but the foundation of all this seems solid to me," Doug observed. "Maybe a defense in layers - a little bit Inception, a little bit Tron? So the first layer is the room, and then you have to get down to the more simulation style space, and so on."
"I can devise you shields of any shape you like, but," Emma smiled gently, "Darcy has to be able to maintain them and the more complex they are, the more taxing that can be. Ambitious, but not over-ambitious is our goal, here. But first, maybe, some repairs. You've heard of kintsugi, I presume? It's always turning up on those twee little motivational memes that get sent around. But with a little mental kintsugi, Darcy may feel somewhat safer right from the start." Emma reached out her hand, touched it the wall of the damaged mental room that surrounded them. Beneath her fingers a thread of gold spun out, looking almost like electrical circuitry, starting to fill one of the cracks in the wall. Emma raised an eyebrow at Darcy, the golden filament pausing halfway along the crack in the wall, waiting for Emma's mental command to spin out again. "Would you like me to continue?" she asked.
Darcy nodded. "We–well, Jean mostly–did some when we were trying to repair my memories after Laurie. And now, well... even after my room got finished, I've mostly felt safer sleeping with my conscious submersed into my computer when I'm alone. Usually music, sometimes something like space pictures from NASA." She shrugged. "Probably not an ideal coping mechanism, but neither was sleeping outside the mansion or having to drug myself heavily enough to actually sleep. At least this way Vi can send me an alert if my attention is needed."
She reached out, lightly placing her hand on Emma's shoulder and giving a mental push, tiny neon streaks of code twining around the gold filaments. "I don't mind complex, at least if I can work on it while I'm napping or meditating."
Emma made a considering face for a moment, clearly gaining the feel of Darcy’s technopathic powers intersecting with her own, helping repair the obvious damage to Darcy’s mental “suite”. “Now that’s interesting,” she finally said, slowly. “I can see and sense your power interlinking with mine, but not get a full sense of it.” She tapped a diamond-tipped fingernail on her lower lip. “Which would introduce a vulnerability that we do not want. A gap that can be exploited by someone with just the right power set.” She smiled suddenly and then purred. “So isn’t it lucky we have someone on hand who can provide a translation for us?”
"Isn't that what you keep me around for?" Doug asked Emma and Darcy both, a teasing humor to his voice. He could see the gold tracery of Emma's psionic presence, one he was very familiar with by now. The neon of Darcy's powers was new to him, but it made sense, a sort of cyberpunk pastiche that held the familiarity of his love for her. But on top of those, Doug could see where the connections needed to be made, the places where the two signatures would need assistance interfacing. And the copper and black overlay on Doug's own signature, that bit of the 'friendos' that accompanied him here, was already reaching out instinctively to touch Darcy, the presence they knew and trusted most after Doug himself. And that meant Doug could handle the connection to Emma, the gestalt presence acting as a bridge between the psionic and the technopathic.
"Never the only reason," Darcy murmured fondly, watching in awe as everything started to weave together, black and copper bridging the small gaps in between neon and gold, coalescing into a whole that resonated of all three of them when she reached out to run her fingers along a crack. "I have so many questions, but the main two... this is going to make me more receptive for your particular brand of psi, isn't it Emma?" The brush of the friendos against the tips of her fingers made her smile. "And Doug... are you leaving some of the friendos in here?"
"I expect so," Emma responded softly to Darcy's query, her head tilting slightly as she traced the three powers and their intersection, filing away the information she gleaned from it to consider more fully in the future, learn from it. "There will always be my tracery throughout the wiring of your shield, unless you decide to completely demolish and rebuild them. But I wouldn't recommend that," Emma reached out a diamond fingernail, gently strummed across the golden tracery she had put into Darcy's 'walls', felt the reassuring hum of her power reflected back at her. She turned suddenly, smiled at Darcy. "This is much stronger than one power alone in your shields, the powers both reinforcing each other and splitting any telepathic attack apart, to deal with the different elements. It should also mean that, if you call me, I'll always be able to hear you. And don't worry," she said, reassuringly, "I don't pry. Don't expect me to join you in your head unexpectedly. I'll only be there if you choose to invite me in." She nodded at Doug. "Either of you." Her grin sharpened only slightly. "Or both," she purred.
Doug didn't quite blush - modesty was something he'd left behind somewhere in the New York Stock Exchange all those years ago - but he did chuckle a bit...nervously, perhaps. "I think that's at Darcy's discretion."
Darcy shivered at the touch of Emma's nails across the golden traces, smiling back at the other woman easily. "I don't mind you doing check-ups as long as you knock. Especially if we've been around hostiles. As for invitations..." her smile turned saucy, and she sauntered over to Emma, pressing against her in a loose embrace. "I don't know, we might break poor Doug's brain, the both of us, but what a way to go. A sometimes treat, perhaps?"
With that, she stepped back, and brought up a mental blueprint of the room between the three of them. "I can't give you specifics on how the room was created, because it's proprietary tech Forge designed and I signed at least a few contracts, but I can show you this." Her hand waved at the blueprint, manipulating it larger and focusing on a very, very small gap near the lamp that controlled whether her room was locked down to psi-interference or not. "This gap–Emma, if you ever need access to us, you can exploit this space specifically. The way that specific wire had to run, there's the tiniest thread of space where psi powers could slip through, but it's extremely hard to notice." She collapsed the prints with a thought. "The only reason I am telling you this is because of who you are to Doug. Please don't tell anyone else in the house. You too Doug. Not even Marie-Ange. I don't want to feel forced to leave because my one safe space here got compromised."
Emma's chuckle was soft. "I'm a telepath, darling," she said. "I've kept more secrets than you can possibly imagine. But," and her expression melted to one of absolute sincerity, "I pinky swear to keep your secret in a lockbox in my mind. It is a thing I hold dear to my heart; to protect the minds of those who are on the side of mutants. Even from other mutants. And if Doug promises it too, then I trust his brain not to break and reveal it, even if someone should try." Emma smiled, reached out, caressed the back of Doug's hand with the tip of her finger. "He has diamonds in his soul, you know. Laced all through it. Stronger than steel, or even nanites, is the heart of my White Knight."
"I promise as well." Doug wouldn't have told Marie-Ange anyway without permission - he knew how to keep secrets as well, even from himself at times. But if it reassured Darcy to hear it explicitly stated, he could hardly begrudge her that added bit of confidence and safety.
Darcy looked off to the side, contemplating their mingled powers making up her shields. "My room is a version of The Box because the only person that didn't tell me I was overreacting this summer just happened to have the skills to do something about it, and even trusting his ability doesn't make me feel fully secure in what's supposed to be my home. It's so easy to be careless on accident. A slip post-coital, a whisper when the walls have ears. I appreciate that you'll both keep this one."
She focused, and they were back in her actual room. "If you'd like to run a brute force attack on the walls, now's your chance," she said to Emma with a small smile. "Otherwise, I think I might owe the both of you dinner."
“Let’s not,” Emma said and smiled. “It’s liable to give us both a headache and the only source for that is the really expensive bottle of champagne I plan to provide to accompany that dinner you’re buying us.” She reached out two elegant hands, one towards Darcy, one to Doug. “Now, let’s go celebrate building something fabulous.”
“So I'm not sure what you want to look at first. How the room works, or working on my psychic shielding." Darcy gave Emma an uncertain smile, fingers winding around a lock of hair nervously. "In theory, my room's similar to The Box once my door is shut. Psi-powers work inside the room, but don't extend past them, and powers outside the room can't come in. In practice..." She shrugged. "Time was short, so we made sure that my powers didn't extend past the shut door and called it good enough for the immediate future."
Emma looked around her at Darcy’s room, which looked like a fairly standard Mansion suite. “Probably easiest to test the technology first,” she said. “The Box has been around a long time now, so I’m familiar with it. If your room is similarly shielded, I can test that out fairly quickly.” She smiled at her Knight. “Doug, darling, perhaps you could close the door for us.”
"Of course." Doug had spent a fair amount of time in the room, and his power didn't exactly lend itself to reaching outside of a space, so he was more than happy to help, especially if it helped Darcy feel more safe and secure. He latched the door and waited to see what he might be needed for next.
"You should still be able to read Doug and I just fine, but do you mind testing to see if you can say hello to... Haller, maybe, or even Charles? A light attempt should just give you resistance, but force... again, in theory, the walls will tell me. At least from the outside directed in. In practice, abruptly shutting off the connection gave me a vicious headache that I wouldn't want to repeat."
~So I can talk to you…~ The brush of Emma’s mind against Doug and Darcy’s was gentle, almost soothing, obviously considerate of Darcy’s concerns around telepathic intrusion, ~but… ah interesting!~ Emma sent her telepathic probe out again, felt the push back against it, like a strike into water that softened, slowed and ultimately stopped the probe before it reached anything outside the walls. Emma’s power skittered around the walls of the room, looking for a place to escape but even the seams of the doors had been sealed in such a way that the probe couldn’t get through. “Not quite like the Box,” she said aloud. “Do you want me to try a brute force attack on it, or would that ring your head like a bell?” she asked Darcy.
"Maybe after, if you don't mind? Then if it does ring me, I can just take my migraine meds and pass out." Darcy's eyes widened for a second. "Oh heck, manners! Please, have a seat. Whatever you need to do to be comfortable for this." She took a seat on her bed, scooting over to make room for Doug automatically. "I was thinking for my shields something like computer firewalls? That's why I wanted Doug here. Extra help for building."
Emma drew a chair towards her, sat down gracefully. “Shields are…” Emma started, then paused for a moment. “Shields are often very personal,” she finally said. “I mean, there are some fairly basic techniques I can teach people that set up a standard level of psi-shielding. Keeps surface skims out of your head, stops you projecting under stress and so on. But once you want something more robust than that, it often helps to start to make them more personalised. Stronger shields require more of your mental capacity, at least to start with, and that is generally easier to maintain if you are making something that your mind easily defaults to. Mine look like this.” Emma reached out for a second, deposited a picture in Darcy and Doug’s heads, a shifting diamond labyrinth, constantly shaping and moving in different directions, all false avenues and twisted perspectives. “Because diamonds are my best friend, obviously,” Emma grinned. “So if thinking of your shields as a computer firewall is what you automatically think of them as, then that is probably the approach to take. It would seem appropriate for your power-set.”
Darcy nodded in understanding. "I used the suite before as my basic shielding. It was easy enough to visualize shutting and locking the door to keep my mess in my own space," she explained. "And Jean helped me clean it up after the disaster Laurie left behind, but it never felt as secure after. Firewalls... traps... something to help stave off that sort of interference, or at least alert me that it's happening. Maybe... Doug could switch some of the language they're coded in?" She tilted her heads towards him as she asked. "Something most people can't read, maybe. I..." she bit her lip. "I trust Doug enough to let him do that, and I trust you enough to guide us because Doug trusts you."
In a way, trusting another person inside your head could be even more intimate than a physical relationship. Doug reached out with the nanite hand to squeeze Darcy's, letting the 'friendos' add their own appreciation of her. "Firewalls make a lot of sense," he agreed. "Layered defense, compartmentalization..." He was probably babbling a bit. "...so Emma uses me as a bridge? I'm good with that."
"That was what I was thinking. We know the nanites can usually get my attention when I'm actively using the technopathy, and I don't think I can just surround my mind with an electric fence, even if it would be nice to watch someone drop and drool if they decided to poke past my surface thoughts uninvited." Darcy's smile was full of teeth.
Emma’s returned an equally sharp grin. “Don’t let me using Doug as a bridge make you think I’m not an official genius when it comes to engineering,” she admonished lightly. “But between a technopath and a nanite-wielding omni-linguist, I’m willing to admit that there’s probably a few technological nuances where you both might outpace me. Just a little,” she held diamond-tipped fingernails a few millimetres apart and her smile was much softer now. “But between the three of us, I think we should be able to devise something that more effectively utilises your own and Doug’s powers to help bolster your shields. Let me know when you’re ready and we can move into your mindscape.”
"I've no doubt you can figure out how to accomplish anything you put your mind to doing," Darcy admitted before taking a few deep breaths and relaxing against Doug's side. "Okay, feel free to come in."
She kept her breathing steady as they transitioned to her mindscape, letting out a low whistle as she took in what was, in the waking world, a shared space with Terry, full of light and very clean. "I knew, academically..." she started, voice shaky as the deep cracks down the walls and broken windows were revealed. "I knew–tha-that damage had been done with the feedback loop with Vi. But I didn't know. Not that it was this bad. Just that it was... not good. Not something I could ignore for long. So, what do you think? We scrap it, or we use it as a false defense?" The door to Terry's side didn't manifest in her mind, but her own door had deep gouges running down it. "When Laurie fucked it up, it was mostly just... slimy and gross, like it needed especially deep cleaning."
"I don't know as much as Emma, but the foundation of all this seems solid to me," Doug observed. "Maybe a defense in layers - a little bit Inception, a little bit Tron? So the first layer is the room, and then you have to get down to the more simulation style space, and so on."
"I can devise you shields of any shape you like, but," Emma smiled gently, "Darcy has to be able to maintain them and the more complex they are, the more taxing that can be. Ambitious, but not over-ambitious is our goal, here. But first, maybe, some repairs. You've heard of kintsugi, I presume? It's always turning up on those twee little motivational memes that get sent around. But with a little mental kintsugi, Darcy may feel somewhat safer right from the start." Emma reached out her hand, touched it the wall of the damaged mental room that surrounded them. Beneath her fingers a thread of gold spun out, looking almost like electrical circuitry, starting to fill one of the cracks in the wall. Emma raised an eyebrow at Darcy, the golden filament pausing halfway along the crack in the wall, waiting for Emma's mental command to spin out again. "Would you like me to continue?" she asked.
Darcy nodded. "We–well, Jean mostly–did some when we were trying to repair my memories after Laurie. And now, well... even after my room got finished, I've mostly felt safer sleeping with my conscious submersed into my computer when I'm alone. Usually music, sometimes something like space pictures from NASA." She shrugged. "Probably not an ideal coping mechanism, but neither was sleeping outside the mansion or having to drug myself heavily enough to actually sleep. At least this way Vi can send me an alert if my attention is needed."
She reached out, lightly placing her hand on Emma's shoulder and giving a mental push, tiny neon streaks of code twining around the gold filaments. "I don't mind complex, at least if I can work on it while I'm napping or meditating."
Emma made a considering face for a moment, clearly gaining the feel of Darcy’s technopathic powers intersecting with her own, helping repair the obvious damage to Darcy’s mental “suite”. “Now that’s interesting,” she finally said, slowly. “I can see and sense your power interlinking with mine, but not get a full sense of it.” She tapped a diamond-tipped fingernail on her lower lip. “Which would introduce a vulnerability that we do not want. A gap that can be exploited by someone with just the right power set.” She smiled suddenly and then purred. “So isn’t it lucky we have someone on hand who can provide a translation for us?”
"Isn't that what you keep me around for?" Doug asked Emma and Darcy both, a teasing humor to his voice. He could see the gold tracery of Emma's psionic presence, one he was very familiar with by now. The neon of Darcy's powers was new to him, but it made sense, a sort of cyberpunk pastiche that held the familiarity of his love for her. But on top of those, Doug could see where the connections needed to be made, the places where the two signatures would need assistance interfacing. And the copper and black overlay on Doug's own signature, that bit of the 'friendos' that accompanied him here, was already reaching out instinctively to touch Darcy, the presence they knew and trusted most after Doug himself. And that meant Doug could handle the connection to Emma, the gestalt presence acting as a bridge between the psionic and the technopathic.
"Never the only reason," Darcy murmured fondly, watching in awe as everything started to weave together, black and copper bridging the small gaps in between neon and gold, coalescing into a whole that resonated of all three of them when she reached out to run her fingers along a crack. "I have so many questions, but the main two... this is going to make me more receptive for your particular brand of psi, isn't it Emma?" The brush of the friendos against the tips of her fingers made her smile. "And Doug... are you leaving some of the friendos in here?"
"I expect so," Emma responded softly to Darcy's query, her head tilting slightly as she traced the three powers and their intersection, filing away the information she gleaned from it to consider more fully in the future, learn from it. "There will always be my tracery throughout the wiring of your shield, unless you decide to completely demolish and rebuild them. But I wouldn't recommend that," Emma reached out a diamond fingernail, gently strummed across the golden tracery she had put into Darcy's 'walls', felt the reassuring hum of her power reflected back at her. She turned suddenly, smiled at Darcy. "This is much stronger than one power alone in your shields, the powers both reinforcing each other and splitting any telepathic attack apart, to deal with the different elements. It should also mean that, if you call me, I'll always be able to hear you. And don't worry," she said, reassuringly, "I don't pry. Don't expect me to join you in your head unexpectedly. I'll only be there if you choose to invite me in." She nodded at Doug. "Either of you." Her grin sharpened only slightly. "Or both," she purred.
Doug didn't quite blush - modesty was something he'd left behind somewhere in the New York Stock Exchange all those years ago - but he did chuckle a bit...nervously, perhaps. "I think that's at Darcy's discretion."
Darcy shivered at the touch of Emma's nails across the golden traces, smiling back at the other woman easily. "I don't mind you doing check-ups as long as you knock. Especially if we've been around hostiles. As for invitations..." her smile turned saucy, and she sauntered over to Emma, pressing against her in a loose embrace. "I don't know, we might break poor Doug's brain, the both of us, but what a way to go. A sometimes treat, perhaps?"
With that, she stepped back, and brought up a mental blueprint of the room between the three of them. "I can't give you specifics on how the room was created, because it's proprietary tech Forge designed and I signed at least a few contracts, but I can show you this." Her hand waved at the blueprint, manipulating it larger and focusing on a very, very small gap near the lamp that controlled whether her room was locked down to psi-interference or not. "This gap–Emma, if you ever need access to us, you can exploit this space specifically. The way that specific wire had to run, there's the tiniest thread of space where psi powers could slip through, but it's extremely hard to notice." She collapsed the prints with a thought. "The only reason I am telling you this is because of who you are to Doug. Please don't tell anyone else in the house. You too Doug. Not even Marie-Ange. I don't want to feel forced to leave because my one safe space here got compromised."
Emma's chuckle was soft. "I'm a telepath, darling," she said. "I've kept more secrets than you can possibly imagine. But," and her expression melted to one of absolute sincerity, "I pinky swear to keep your secret in a lockbox in my mind. It is a thing I hold dear to my heart; to protect the minds of those who are on the side of mutants. Even from other mutants. And if Doug promises it too, then I trust his brain not to break and reveal it, even if someone should try." Emma smiled, reached out, caressed the back of Doug's hand with the tip of her finger. "He has diamonds in his soul, you know. Laced all through it. Stronger than steel, or even nanites, is the heart of my White Knight."
"I promise as well." Doug wouldn't have told Marie-Ange anyway without permission - he knew how to keep secrets as well, even from himself at times. But if it reassured Darcy to hear it explicitly stated, he could hardly begrudge her that added bit of confidence and safety.
Darcy looked off to the side, contemplating their mingled powers making up her shields. "My room is a version of The Box because the only person that didn't tell me I was overreacting this summer just happened to have the skills to do something about it, and even trusting his ability doesn't make me feel fully secure in what's supposed to be my home. It's so easy to be careless on accident. A slip post-coital, a whisper when the walls have ears. I appreciate that you'll both keep this one."
She focused, and they were back in her actual room. "If you'd like to run a brute force attack on the walls, now's your chance," she said to Emma with a small smile. "Otherwise, I think I might owe the both of you dinner."
“Let’s not,” Emma said and smiled. “It’s liable to give us both a headache and the only source for that is the really expensive bottle of champagne I plan to provide to accompany that dinner you’re buying us.” She reached out two elegant hands, one towards Darcy, one to Doug. “Now, let’s go celebrate building something fabulous.”
