Chapter Text
Edge had woken up to frantic yelling.
The past night was a blur to him. After they had defeated the Hollow Queen and squared things away with the Count, Marianne had proposed that everyone go out for a bit of “adult entertainment” and had Mia stay with their father for the night, which Edge didn’t mind- spared him the embarrassment of a ten-year-old teasing him for being drunk.
What had surprised him was that Marianne had been the one to suggest getting drinks; after all, she was usually a staunch teetotaler.
The last thing he remembered was seeing Logre- er, Whirlwind -in the Dancing Peacock, and approaching him.
Before that, he had found out that Miku cannot hold her liquor. Makes sense- after all, Vessels are pretty frail. One beer and she was “frost girl drunk,” as his old comrades would have crudely said. Lis had also had a bit to drink at this point, but he was still there to support her.
Marianne, on the other hand, was an equal match to him, but she knew how to control herself. Edge did not.
The two had been trying to drink each other under the table when Edge saw Whirlwind. It was a strange night, all in all, between coming to terms with the fact that Miku wasn’t human and Marianne was a very competitive drunk. Marianne, naturally, had teased him as his tunnel vision led him to approach the silver-haired man; Lis had crowed at him as he went by without a word.
After that, it all turned black.
“Did we---?! To each other?!”
“I-I don’t know, Lis!”
The pair’s frantic shrieks were like bullets through Edge’s brain. He groaned and clutched his temples as he struggled to sit up in bed- his own bed, at that, which was rather shocking. He had a...reputation...when he drank too much.
“Can’t a guy wake up peacefully?!” Edge shouted, glaring at the wall.
“Not when THIS has happened!” Lis yelled back.
“What, was your wallet stolen?” Edge sneered. “Keep a bet---”
“I g---”
“Lis, no!”
“He’s going to see eventually, Miku!”
“...See what?”
Silence from the hallway.
Edge managed to wrestle himself out of his bedsheets and his feet hit the floor with a resounding thunk. He stood up slowly, steadying himself on the nightstand, and wrapped his sheet around if only to pretend that he had some dignity left.
He didn’t want to be the parental figure right now, but Marianne was either asleep or retrieving Mia, or these two would be with her right now.
The door swung open, and Edge swore he heard a sharp gasp.
Lis was red as a beet, Miku silver as a knife. Lis had his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his leather trenchcoat, and Miku had her arms crossed as closely to her chest as possible, her frail, bony hands shoved up underneath her armpits.
“Either you can show me your hands, or I can pry them out,” Edge said sternly, shielding his eyes against the bright lights in the hallway with one hand and holding the other hand out expectantly, forgetting his sheet as it fell to the floor.
“God, you look almost militant, Edge. Other than being completely nude,” Lis mumbled angrily as he shrunk further into his coat. A lump formed in Edge’s throat.
“Mr. Edge…?”
“Ah? Ah, yes. Your hands, if you please.”
Edge cleared his throat rather loudly and held out one hand for each of the young adults. Lis and Miku glanced at each other shyly, and then they slowly, excruciatingly so, pulled their left hands out and placed them on Edge’s open palms.
There, on each left ring finger, was a simple golden ring.
“What the fuck?”
“...Uh, Edge…”
“What do you mean, ‘Uh, Edge’? You have WEDDING RINGS O---”
“Edge, you have one too,” Miku whispered.
“WHAT?!”
Edge pulled his left hand sharply out from under Lis’s and flipped it backside-up, staring at it in shock, horror, humiliation.
“Edge, you’re shaking,” Lis said with a slight shit-eating grin.
“Honestly, I figured if we did something so stupid while we were drunk, then so did you, Edge,” Miku added quietly. “I mean no offense, but you…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m a sloppy drunk,” Edge grumbled, scratching his head with his newly adorned hand. “Look, lemme get a bath and then we’ll go down to the courthouse and get this all sorted out, alright? Even if you two married each other, polygamy’s too much to sort out for the courts, so it’s easier not to have it at all. I’ll tell Dalla to relay the message to Marianne…”
“No, no, I’ll do it while you’re in the shower,” Lis replied quickly. He waved his hand dismissively. “Besides, what if Marianne is down there too? We haven’t got any time to waste.” Edge nodded and went back into his room.
-----
“Ah, yes, I remember you three…” the elderly judge mused as two young adults and one older man stared at him angrily, hungover, their left hands splayed in front of their faces with three golden rings on full display. “Where is the other young man who was with you, though…?”
“Wh-who?” Edge managed to choke out.
“Ah, that’s right, you three were raging drunk last night… You don’t remember anything, do you?” the judge asked gently, scratching his thick, white beard.
Lis and Miku blushed heavily, and Miku pulled her hood all the way over her face. Edge, on the other hand, had no shame and simply replied, “Nope,” with a nonchalant shrug.
“Well…” the judge began, tapping his forehead.
“You three had a full-on mob behind you last night. Everyone was demanding to get married! Said that they didn’t want to waste any more time, said they could die in the labyrinth any day now… Especially with those nasty beasties in the Scarlet Pillars!
“Now, normally, we try not to have adventurers wed precisely because they die so often… Adventurers are told so when they arrive in Tharsis. After all, it would be a nightmare for the courts to deal with processing all those deaths, and there’s also the problem of people coming in and claiming citizenship solely to get married in a fashion that their own nation would not allow…
“However, seeing all of these lovesick explorers, I could tell that they were truly unhappy with not being lawfully bonded with their lovers… And they all seemed to be explorers themselves, which meant that they wouldn’t be leaving widows and widowers behind for too long… So I decided, both for my own safety and for the sakes of these adventurers, I would gather up all of the officiants and hold several ceremonies at once.”
The trio of explorers chuckled slightly.
“It must have been quite a sight,” Miku said with a dreamy sigh.
“It was… Both because of all the love in the air, and also because everyone was quite drunk,” the judge replied. “Naturally, I let your group of four go first…”
“But who was with us?!” Edge suddenly cried out. Lis and Miku glanced over at him. His face was bright red, and he seemed quite concerned. In fact, he was practically shaking like a leaf.
“Oh, I’m...afraid I don’t know his name. But I can get the records of your marriages and let you see them. And then you can decide how to proceed from there,” the judge explained.
“Thank you, sir, that would be wonderful,” Lis replied. He turned to Edge sternly. “We should sit here and wait.”
Miku put a hand on Edge’s back and guided him to the bench behind them. With his head in his hands, he sat down carefully and let out a strangled whimper.
“Edge, what’s wrong with you?” Lis scoffed. “Don’t tell me you know who it might be.”
“I… I-it’s a long story, but… I hope it both is and is not who I’m thinking it might be,” Edge mumbled, ears growing redder by the second.
“Ha! Are you wishing it was me?”
“No. In fact, I’m pretty sure you married Miku, what with all the eye sex you two have been giving each other lately.”
Lis and Miku’s jaws dropped and they looked at each other apprehensively. Edge lifted his head for a second and smiled at them sadly.
“Don’t worry, I know what it was like, being a teenager…” he whispered. “My teen years were a bit rough, but I do know what you all long for…”
“I need to see the judge now,” a male’s voice said tersely as it came closer and closer to the door, rising in volume as the distance shortened. Edge stared at the door in horror, and Lis and Miku stared in shock- they all knew whose voice that was.
“Wait! Let me go in first and see them! I can...talk to them.”
“Marianne…?” Miku muttered.
The door slammed open, and Marianne came in in a huff, Mia at her side, and immediately stormed up to Edge.
“What the HELL---?!”
“Marianne, I can---!”
“---did you MEAN---”
“Marianne, please---!”
“By hosting a MARRIAGE REBELLION?!”
“Marianne, we don’t know what the hell happened! We were blacked out at that point!”
“Are you alright now?” Mia inquired innocently. “Mari says that blacking out is dangerous.”
“W-we are,” Edge replied with a shaking voice. “M-Marianne, honestly, I have no clue what went down last night, other than that apparently I’m married...and so are those two…”
He nodded over at Lis and Miku.
“You took advantage of THOSE TWO too?! What the HELL, Edge?!”
“All I remember is that we convinced Edge to come with us!” Lis yelled.
“Wh-what…?”
“Lis, no…”
Lis had said that he didn’t remember a single thing after helping Miku sit down for the sixth time that night. So why was he throwing himself under the bus now, of all times…?
“You know what? I’ll talk about this with all of you later. Right now you need to meet your new husband, Edge…” Marianne hissed. She took Mia by the shoulders, whirled around, and left in quite a hurry.
“My, my, what’s all the fuss about?” the judge asked bemusedly, waving some papers with a cheerful expression.
“Oh, you’re back…!” Lis said. He sighed in relief.
Miku glanced at the door furtively. “Wasn’t he coming in?” she asked quietly.
“I thought so, but maybe Marianne’s keeping him…” Edge replied with a similar glance at the door.
The three stared holes into the judge as he shuffled his papers on his podium. “I’ve been informed that the other young man has arrived, so I’m going to wait on him to come in,” he explained cheerfully.
As if on cue, heavy footfalls echoed on the marble floor, and Edge looked up at his husband, a heavy lump in his throat.
“So, which one of you lucky chaps did I marry?” Whirlwind asked breezily as ever, flashing his golden band for everyone to see.
“...”
Everyone stared at him in varying levels of shock.
“OH GOD-FUCKING-DAMMIT!!!”
“L-Lis!”
“I FUCKING CALLED IT!”
“What the hell, Lis?!”
“You tell me and Miku off for having eye sex, when you and he have been visually impregnating each other since the day you met!”
“We have NOT!”
Whirlwind stepped in between the two men and raised his hands. “Now, look, I can only hope that I haven’t been...untoward to Edge here, but I think we should get this sorted out first and foremost, don’t you?” He smiled tightly at Lis and Miku. The two nodded with wide eyes.
“Now, then, I’ll take Edge out here to speak with him, and you two can have your own conversation on how to proceed from here…” Whirlwind grabbed Edge’s hand tightly and led him out the back door to the back lot.
“M-morbid placing to be discussing a marriage, huh?” Edge muttered, stealing glances at the guillotine in the center of the field. Though it hadn’t been used in decades, it was kept as a historical exhibit, and the blade was still crusted with blood.
Whirlwind grabbed Edge by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes with a...sad, or perhaps bittersweet, expression. “Look, I know you… I know you always, even back then, had some sort of feelings for me…”
“Is he speaking in double meanings, or does he even know…?” Edge thought. “Surely he knows- he always was sharp -but I can’t lead myself on that he recognizes me…”
“But I think it would be best if we...ignored this arrangement. It would be far more difficult to have it annulled, since the union is technically illegal. And the Outland Count may not entertain the idea of having riotous lawbreakers in his court…”
Edge stared at his feet. “So I should remove this ring then? Is that all you’re saying?”
“It would draw more suspicion for us to wear it in public.”
“I see.”
Edge slowly pulled off the ring and put it in his pocket. Whirlwind did the same.
“L- Whirlwind, why did you agree…?”
“To be honest… I have no clue what my mindset was at the time. I don’t remember anything after you approached me in the Dancing Peacock,” Whirlwind replied, looking over at the wall with great interest.
He looked back at Edge and patted the man’s shoulder. “Let’s go in and check on your friends, shall we?” He had already switched back to his lazy, mischievous grin as he turned to go into the door. Edge stood there for a few minutes, staring as Whirlwind went inside, as the door swung shut with a soul-shaking slam, and finally at the empty air where the older man once was.
“Logre…” Edge whispered, his voice trembling. “Did you really…?”
He pressed his palms to his eyes to keep the tears from spilling out; he clenched his teeth to keep from wailing.
With his hands shoved in his pockets, Edge opened the door to go inside.
-----
“So it’s settled, then? The marriages are staying on? I understand. Then this court is adjourned.”
Whirlwind left first; the trio of guildmates watched as he left and then looked at each other knowingly.
“Well, time to face the hellfire.”
“And the brimstone.”
“Indeed, Lis, indeed.”
Edge and Lis stared at each other for a solid minute.
“Hey, why did you…?”
Edge’s voice trailed off.
“Oh, about earlier? Marianne tends to target you a bit unfairly… I say ‘a bit’ because you do get pretty crazy when you drink. But she always assumes that anything that happens is your fault, and since we don’t know the full story, I don’t want to see anyone being targeted.”
Miku lightly touched Lis’s shoulder, her ring glittering in the light. “Actually, Lis, Whirlwind told me who started the riot…”
“Really? Who was it?”
“Wait, I thought he…”
“You thought he what?”
Lis and Miku stared at Edge queerly. Edge smiled shyly.
“Oh, never mind. It’s nothing important,” he said, holding his right hand over his mouth to hide his growing grin.
“Anyways, who was the perpetrator?” Lis asked Miku.
“It was Marianne.”
“...What?” Edge and Lis said in deadpan unison.
“You heard me. Must be why she was itching for a fight- deflecting the blame. Of course, this means she knows you were lying, Lis… But we know something even bigger, and we can keep her from chewing us out about it.”
“Ooh, you naughty girl~” Lis purred, grabbing Miku by the waist and pulling her close. “I’ll have to chew you out when we get back to the inn~”
Miku giggled. Edge just looked away shyly.
“C’mon, lovebirds, we have a boss to confront!” he said loudly. “You can punish your gir- er, your wife later!”
Lis and Miku blushed and followed him out of the courtroom.