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"So." Beakley taps her fingers on her crossed arms. "You're alive."
Della is sat in the rocking chair on the opposite side of the nursery from the bassinet. Beakley has moved it to sit in the corner for this occasion, actually -- furthest from the bassinet, in a position that can be easily blocked from the view of the doorway in case someone manages to get through the locked door without her notice, which is unlikely, but it brings her peace to know things are set up this way all the same. Behind Beakley, Webby babbles to herself, probably looking at the mobile above her, which is made up of animals and flowers and no stars or planets, although she had been inclined toward the latter patterns. But it was best to be safe, in this home.
"I am," Della agrees. Her face is lined, more so than Beakley is used to seeing in the pictures that used to trace the walls of the family room, in the photo that used to sit on Scrooge's desk, accompanying the too-loud voice that used to call cheerily across the S.H.U.S.H. office she was technically not supposed to know existed. And, more recently, the face on reports, the face scrubbed from broadcasts and newspapers, the face she knows haunts Scrooge every waking minute and probably most of his sleeping ones, too.
"At some point in the future, you're alive," Beakley clarifies.
"Right." Della shifts to cross her metal leg over the other, and Beakley tries not to follow the movement with her eyes, but it's difficult. "This feels like 20 Questions. And it feels dangerous. You already know too much."
Bentina Beakley is well-trained when it comes to chrono-protocol. This future-Della, whoever she is, wherever she is from, should not be here in the first place, and, to minimize any and all impacts on the timeline, she should leave as soon as possible, taking nothing with her and leaving no further information behind.
But Beakley is completely shaken by her appearance.
"How?" she asks.
Della eyes her with a wariness that her contemporary self would never have displayed. "I can't tell you that. You know I can't tell you that."
"What you need to do," Beakley says, almost as a question, "is have me help you as quickly and painlessly as possible with getting back to your own time, informing no one else and leaving no trace of your presence here and now."
"Yes."
And Beakley knows how much is at stake, the consequences and the potential disasters, but the real disaster is downstairs in the kitchen, and the danger of him is heavy and present in her every waking thought, while time travel is abstract and far from her reality. As a result, an emotional, ridiculous part of her is angry.
"Your uncle," she tells Della, "is downstairs a complete wreck right now. I'm scared to leave him alone for even an hour most days. And you're going to stay just long enough to torture me with the knowledge of your survival, and then leave him like that? He's killing himself over you, Della."
Della shrinks slightly. "I know," she says. "I've had enough of the lectures and the guilt and the misery. I wish I could change things, I really do. But I can't. And I won't."
Behind Beakley, Webby begins to fuss. Della pushes herself to her feet, almost instinctively, and Beakley steps in front of the bassinet without thought.
Della hesitates, then steps forward, rolling up her sleeve. Loose around her wrist is a handmade friendship bracelet, pink and blue. It's the same faded blue of Della's scarf, and the same soft pink of the headband that's currently keeping Webby's six-month curls back.
"I probably shouldn't tell you this," she says, softly, "but she gave this to me after we... Well, it doesn't matter." She rolls her sleeve back down and looks away. "You don't have to believe me. You probably shouldn't."
She's right on this front, of course, but there's something solid and loving in this Della's eyes, something that Beakley understands more than she ever could the young Della. So she steps back. "Alright," she allows.
A grin spreads over Della's face slowly, and then she sweeps Webby out of the crib, catching the baby in a laugh that disrupts her sniffles.
"How's my favorite little girl?" Della asks, laughing herself. It's as though the world shrinks to exist only for these two. "You're growing up to be so big and strong, aren't you!" She hikes the baby up onto her shoulder, turning her head to look at her. "Well, strong, anyway."
As if to prove it, Webby grabs Della's finger in a ravioli-sized fist. The baby still seems nervous, as though she's not sure how to feel about this stranger, but Della gently frees her finger from the little, unforgiving grasp, settles Webby's head against her shoulder, and softly wraps her free hand around the baby's hand, drawing circles on the back of her wrist with her thumb.
"It relaxes her when you rub the back of her hand like that," Della explains. "Well, it does when I'm from, anyway. Puts her right to sleep, practically."
Beakley watches Della sway to settle the baby down. The woman has no sense of the awkwardness of time, of waiting to get the baby to fall asleep, or of Beakley standing there. She just settles into the motion of rocking from side to side, the floorboards creaking slightly beneath her, and Beakley can't help but wonder if Della ever gets to do this with her own children.
Webby is soon fast asleep and drooling on Della's shoulder. Beakley holds her hands out to take her, and Della nods. She kisses Webby's downy head.
"I'm sorry I have to leave," Della whispers to her. "I'll be back before you know it. Just a short decade. A few minutes for me, anyway. Same difference." Beakley is not meant to hear this, but her ears are sharp and she does not tune out any information, ever.
"I'll see you on the other side," Della murmurs as Beakley puts the baby down in her crib once more.
"I'll accompany you to the Other Bin," Beakley says.
Della steps back, holding her arms out gallantly toward the door, although something in her frame is deflated and worn. "Lead the way."
When Della gets home, the first thing she does is clap Beakley on the arm, before almost immediately sweeping Webby into a bone-crushing spinning hug. Webby giggles much the same as she did thirteen years ago.
"I suppose," Beakley interrupts quietly, "now that you're back, I should probably reprimand you. For messing with the time stream."
Della winces. She lets Webby down -- not nearly so far from the ground as she used to be, the girl is growing like a weed, though she's still a tiny thing -- and her niece scurries away to avoid the awkward conversation.
"I-- yeah. I know. I didn't mean for it to happen, I swear."
"What little information you gave me then," Beakley continues, "was very dangerous nonetheless. Someone knew you were alive when there was no hope. If it had been anyone other than me, it could have very well gotten out and changed the course of history tremendously."
"I know." Della kicks at the ground.
"I should probably tell you off. But instead, I'm going to thank you."
Della looks up in surprise. "Wh-"
"You gave me hope," Beakley says. "And I needed it, dearly. Whether I should have had it or not. So thank you. And thank you for making it home."
Beakley bids future-Della farewell, watching her descend into the depths of the Other Bin, and closes the door behind her. Just in time, too, for Scrooge finds her moments later, distantly frantic.
"I thought I heard..." Scrooge says, then falters. He's completely shattered, but then he's been like this for some time. "She..."
Beakley takes his arm, feeling like a nurse dealing with a bewildered patient. "You couldn't have," she tells him, feeling sick to her stomach about the lie. "You know you couldn't have seen her."
Scrooge falls asleep at his desk for the fourth time in a week, and she thinks about Della, who is alive, and presumably relatively safe, and Beakley can say nothing.
Scrooge ignores another plate set at his elbow, and Beakley wonders where Della is getting the fuel to stay alive right now.
"You have to eat," Beakley tells him.
"I ate this morning."
"That was twenty hours ago; it's nearly morning again. You won't be any good to- to anyone if you waste away." He won't be any good to Della, that is for certain, but the truth beneath it all is that Beakley needs him, too.
He looks up at her with a strange resolution on his face, and, watching the pen tremble in his weak fingers, Beakley wonders consciously for the first time if she's even going to be able to get him through this, if Della will ever get to see her uncle in the flesh again.
Scrooge's board veto his latest search attempts, telling him in no uncertain terms that Della is dead (which she is not, and Beakley can say nothing) and that the endeavor is a waste of money (which it is not, it can't be) and a risk to both the company and the people in it, and he is so far from himself and so utterly lost that he cannot fight back.
She tries to get him to fight back, briefly. That line of action is dangerous on her part, because he cannot know where her confidence comes from. She gives up. Beakley hates giving up. He locks himself in his room and goes so long without responding to her calls that she nearly breaks down the door to make sure he's still breathing.
It goes like this for some time. She spends the next week watching him like he's another child: She sets his pajamas out for him at night, warmed and ironed, and once changed he comes down in his dressing gown under pain of death and has his bedtime tea in the kitchen nook while she warms up Webby's milk. She walks Scrooge to bed, practically tucking him in when he's in a severe enough stupor. In the mornings, she brings him his tea and tells him exactly how long he has to prepare himself before she comes back and forces him to get out of bed and dress himself. She makes him oatmeal and stares him down until he manages to eat a sufficient amount.
He's a complete wreck, more rubble and ruin than the person he used to be, and she still thinks he's a damn fool, and at times he is viciously, needlessly cruel to her in the way an injured animal might find itself biting its caretaker because there is nothing else to be done about the pain. But he is drowning before her eyes; there is no one else to keep his head above water.
Even if there were, she would still be here. He's her friend.
Beakley thinks that perhaps he is going to be okay for the first time when she comes in one morning, some weeks later, with the tea tray and Scrooge, having already drawn the curtains back, looks her up and down and says, "You look terrible, 22. Have you been sleeping?"
She hasn't. At least, not well. Webby doesn't sleep through the night yet, of course. But even when she tries to get to sleep, either after having put the baby down or holding her curled up on her chest at some sort of configuration in which she's holding the bottle steady with her chin so she can rest her arms and perhaps relax a little, she finds herself thinking of Della, and of how unfair it is that Beakley is trying to rescue a man who is grieving someone purposelessly.
"Enough," she says instead, which they both know cannot be true.
The next morning, she wakes to find sunlight in her eyes. Her alarm has been disabled. Her chest catches with that knot of anxiety that comes just moments before you realize what exactly it is that you've forgotten. Sunshine. Slept in. Slept at all. Webby.
She scrambles to find her glasses -- not on her head, not neatly tucked in their case where she would have put them if she'd actually settled down to bed properly, and there they are, finally, folded politely on the edge of the nightstand, where she never puts them -- and she is to the door in a second.
She bursts into the nursery. There, despite the fact that the sight is entirely illogical, especially these days, is Scrooge, in the rocking chair with her tiny bundle of light curled up on his chest fast asleep.
Scrooge looks up at her as though it's nothing, gives her that little eyebrow lift he used to shoot her way back when Della was here and there was spark left in him. He's got the tiny baby's hand clasped gently in his.
"It relaxes her," he says with a soft nonchalance, "when you hold her wrist like this."