How Did We Get Into This Mess - KOTLC Oneshots

Tomorrow

( If only I knew what my heart was telling me- don't know what I'm feeling . . . Is this just a dream? )

It was funny, a curious line of thought to ponder. What might have been. What had led up to now.

If the Black Swan hadn't sent the newspaper. If Alvar hadn't quit, giving Fitz the job. If Sophie hadn't forgiven Biana for making friends with her to spy. If Fitz hadn't . . . if Biana had said something . . . it didn't matter now.

Because Fitz was asking Sophie to marry him.

"Ah, young love," Della reminisced. "I thought he would wait for at least a half-century!"

Quinlin nodded, face frozen into an expression of unadulterated shock. Livvy downed her second glass of lushberry wine, wholly unprepared for what was happening. To be honest, Biana wasn't either. It was all too soon.

"She's barely out of Foxfire," she complained. "What makes you think we're all ready to go from defeating the Neverseen to serious romantic relationships? I mean, marriage? If anything, aren't you guys the people that should be telling us to wait?"

"Biana Amberly Vacker," Alden began, his voice dangerously low.

"No," Livvy interrupted. "She's right."

"She is?" Della said, surprised. She had expected her own fiance to side with her, not her daughter.

"If me and Livvy had waited longer, we wouldn't have had to go through that terror of a Match Fail. The matchmakers purposefully make them a ridiculous ordeal so you get scared out of going through with it," Quinlin complained.

"But they're different people! They aren't the same elves we were then."

"That's not what I meant," Livvy protested to both Della and Quinlin. "I've spent an insane amount of time with Sophie, and I can tell she isn't half as invested in her relationship as Fitz is. My physician training could be wrong, and I could be misinterpreting, but I don't believe they're going to last much longer."

"It's truly a shame," Alden said, shaking his head in disapproval. "All of the time I wasted trying to get Keefe to stay away from Sophie-"

"Which you recognize was what?" Quinlin prompted.

"Wrong and deeply out of place."

Biana got up, her chair cruising back on the carpet, silent but for a whisper of fibers. Ignoring the calls from her parents and their partners, she haphazardly ran to her room, ornate gold decor and various shades of purple failing to comfort her.

Call her cliche, but she had dreamed about her wedding since she was a little girl. Her dress- a sheer lace bodice and long sleeves, of course, ballgown skirt with a train, diamonds and seed pearls delicately placed on both the silk and her hair . . . beautiful.

Recently, her dreams had shifted. They now starred a blonde girl who looked as if she belonged in a fairy tale, a smile breaking out on her lips as her eyes lifted from her bouquet to meet Biana's tearful teal gaze. When she reached the altar the Vanisher had already made her way to, she would laugh softly, lifting a hand to brush away the tears from Biana's cheeks.

She would whisper something about how at least elvin waterproof makeup wasn't a scam, and Biana's fingers would clench the stems of her flowers as she fought not to make an unflattering face, her smile digging into her cheeks.

Forkle would raise an eyebrow, or clear his throat, and mutter something about them kids, choking up.

They would take turns crying as they read their vows, stumbling over words as they had to press the back of their palms to their mouths before continuing.