The battle against Puddlemere for a bid into the League Championship behind her, a good portion of Gwen's mind was still on the upcoming final game against Falmouth, not to mention the ever-present Jennings threat to not only Fabriana, but herself and possibly Regan and the rest of her team.

The two things were enough to pull at Gwen's focus, but the added heated agitation that she'd felt prickling across her skin of late didn't help. It made her restless, her temper easy to flare. It irritated to thing on it's possible source and so it was pushed to the side.

What couldn't really be put off any longer was a talk with Regan about things else than the pup, or the inconsequentials that made up their time together. It was comfortable, true, but there were logistics for them to work through.

As she clipped up the stairs after collecting the Muggle post that still came, Gwen had the thought, not for the first or last time, that she really did want to fill the gallery with things that would bring it to life, make it a home for both herself and Regan.

Finally coming to the third level, her heels clipped against the hard floor as she headed towards Regan's suite. She hadn't really decorated yet either but for a bed and a wardrobe, a small sofa and rug in the sitting room. Settling down onto the little sofa, Gwen added several things to her mental list that would need to be done sooner than later as she rifled through the post and waited for her small friend; Regan would have heard her coming and would join her.

Rolling her eyes as the dog rocketed from the bed at the first clap of Gwen's heels against the marble, Regan slid from the duvet and padded into the sitting room adjoining her bedchamber, curling up on the sofa and shooing Teddy gently to one side.

"You know, if I were silly enough to be jealous of a dog's affections, I'd be quite put out that he very nearly launches into orbit every time he hears you come home," she pretended to pout, laying her chin on Gwen's shoulder. Teddy, oblivious, bounded across her lap to wriggle between them, his whole roly-poly body abuzz with joy, a giant doggie grin on his face.

Gwen very nearly pursed her lips at the wiggling pup. "Surely only because we rarely see one another. I'm sure he'd much prefer your lessons to mine, as well as your company for any prolonged periods of time."

Giggling at the nonplussed expression her friend wore, Regan hefted her pup, giving him a snuggle before setting him on her far side and bidding him 'sit'. He obeyed promptly, settling into a sprawl a moment later.

"Well, I'm glad when you come home, too, so I imagine I could be setting a better example. I don't leap on you anymore, though, and he hasn't quite learned that yet," Regan pondered aloud.

"How was your day?" she prompted, tucking her feet beneath her to await the reason for Gwen seeking her out.

"I'm both glad and disappointed the season is coming to close," Gwen replied, uncrossing her legs and settling further into the sofa. Now that Teddy was away from her, she even reached across and tapped his nose affectionately. "I imagine I'll have rather late nights for the next little while, but I wanted to check in with you, dear one," she said, dark eyes shifting from the pup to Regan, a small smile curling her lips. "You never did tell me how your outing with Rose was."

"Highly entertaining, though I found that I'm an abysmal bowler, and though Rose is perhaps not so very much older than I am, she has..." Regan sought a delicate way to phrase her thought, her nose crinkling slightly at the odd prickly feeling the memory gave her. "She is very... blunt... in her manner of speaking, and I imagine a great deal more educated in certain aspects of adult life than I am. She doesn't mean it, I think, but it..."

Her cheeks tinted pink, and she shrugged. "I try not to be distressed by it."

Gwen suppressed the smile wanting to curl her lips. Part of her was amused. She knew that Regan was inexperienced, and also that should she talk about the subjects she was hinting at, she would be very proper and tactful.

Rose most definitely was not like that.

It was part of the small woman's charm, but made for what she imagined to be the most curious conversations between Regan and Rose. It was good for Regan, but at the same time, Gwen realized that it was very unlikely that Tristan had talked to her about anything but the reasons for the birth control potion she was on and that Regan would have questions, questions that should have been answered and thoroughly explored a long time ago.

"Rose isn't the type to ever distress you apurpose," Gwen replied as she pet a hand down Regan's hair and bent to press a kiss to her temple. "If you enjoy her company, then continue to spend time with her, and if you ever have questions that her words bring up, do feel free to speak to me as well."

A smile touched her lips then. "I'll have to take your word on the bowling, as I can't say it is one of the Muggle entertainments that I know of."

"Oh, I know... and I do enjoy her company, a great deal, really, as she is cheerful and light, and quite clever in her own way," Regan explained, cuddling happily into Gwen as she was loved upon. "And I don't mind that she says things like that, it's only that sometimes I don't understand at first, and then I feel a bit silly because I suppose I ought to know what she means without her having to explain it to me... but I ... I don't think that way, on my own."

She worried her lower lip in her teeth for a few moments, tipping her head back thoughtfully as she regarded Gwen. "I've only ever had one beau, and Luc was far too sweet to press me toward anything I didn't want myself... I can't think that Rose's gentlemen have been much like him, from the way she speaks about... well, men, and being with them."

A lock of her hair found its way into her grasp, and Regan fidgeted with the strands, twisting them in her fingers as she spoke, venturing a test of Gwen's offer about questions. "I suppose it wouldn't be unpleasant, if you trusted the fellow, to be held against a wall for kisses, or other things, and it would be easier, being small... I'd just never considered it before. Luc liked to hold me in his lap, when he wanted to kiss me, and that was quite nice indeed."

Having sought Regan out, this conversation wasn't one Gwen thought she'd be having with her young friend. It was obvious that Regan needed someone to talk to about it though.

Gwen had never been shy about it herself and she could remember asking Joscelin very pointed and blunt questions starting at a very young age, and that Joscelin had never been shy himself about making sure she knew what she needed to. A lot she had figured out on her own, too, but Gwen was much bolder than Regan, and though Gwen had known upon first meeting Regan that the young woman was a 'late bloomer' so to speak, she'd not thought on the fact that she would be the one to ease her through that time.

It was not an unwelcome task, but even as Gwen began to speak, she realized it was something that would require much more thought on her part in the future. "Nothing is so unpleasant if you trust the person you are with, but that is the key. Trust. If there is not trust, then he is not a person that it is likely safe for you to be with, nor will it ever be particularly enjoyable. If there is trust, however, then yes, even being held against a wall for kisses, or other things, can be nice despite how big or small you are."

Regan nodded, satisfied with Gwen's answer and the concept of broaching such things at all, and at the admission, her mind drifted easily to memories of their shared past. She'd begun, especially nearing Christmastime, to lose count of the number of times she'd entered a room to find Gwen and her brother, their heads bent together for a brief kiss or simple closeness, and the siege of images, tender and happy, made a knot in her throat as she tried to breathe.

Softly, a thread of sadness and pain winding incongruously with the words, she whispered, "He loved you so much..."

Tristan. Gwen had needed to talk to Regan of Tristan, but not in this way. Not with memories that recalled times that she had been angry for the loss of, had grieved for.

Wrapping her arms around Regan, she could feel the melancholy in the smaller woman as she rested her cheek to her blond hair. "I loved him," she finally said, voice soft as she turned to press her lips to the downy locks. She loved him still, even, but not as she once had; she couldn't, but she could not be with Regan every day, love the tiny woman she had taken on as all but a sister, and not love the brother, the first man she had ever been in love with.

Still holding Regan, Gwen spoke again at length. "We need to take care of him. Some paperwork at Waverly needs to be finalized. It will require you to settle the estate with your mother, however." She hadn't wanted to talk about this with Regan; neither Tristan nor their mother was a pleasant subject, but he had to be cared for in the best way that they could manage.

Swallowing her tears, as Gwen's embrace held the worst of her grief at bay, Regan acknowledged, "I know," in a small voice, twining her fingers with the slender ones of her comforter.

"I need to owl her... I've been neglecting that willfully. I am sorry." She sighed, turning her face into Gwen's neck, the reminder to herself, merely spoken aloud, "We are neither of us your responsibility."

"Family isn't about responsibility," Gwen assured her, hand drifting to Regan's back and rubbing absently. "And there's no reason to be sorry for anything. You're not the only one who has put the task at the bottom of the list." Glancing down at the blond head tucked against her, Gwen asked, "if you'd like me to go with you, I can?"

"Please?" Regan murmured, tipping her face up to Gwen hopefully. "She loathes me, and I am very much not looking forward to convincing her of anything, much less something that involves Tristan." The sound of his name paused her, and her mouth worked for a moment as she tried to keep her expression from crumpling. "I miss him terribly."

Gwen's embrace tightened around Regan, and for a long moment it was her will, only, that kept her composed. She'd grieved for him, but the last month she'd had to do so in a whole new way, and that too, was something she'd put aside. She didn't want to think of him that way, but he needed to be thought of.

"I'll go with you. We can go visit him, after, too," she said, voice low and warm, soothing.

Regan shook her head, clinging tightly to Gwen in return. "I miss him, not his body. That isn't... my brother is not there, when that man's face looks at me. It isn't Tristan," she insisted bitterly, coughing back a sob. She gulped in air, struggling for composure and reconciliation between reality and the beautiful dream she kept forcing herself out of, where everything was as it should be. Subsiding, she agreed, "But yes, we must go and... visit."

"I know it's not him," Gwen said softly, petting Regan's hair without ceasing now. "But someday his eyes may see, and you should be there for that."

It was hard to watch Regan like this, but she'd yet to really mourn for Tristan. She'd been in so much shock upon her arrival at Tretower, and then it had been constant adjustment since. Gwen had found Teddy in an effort to give her something to love and focus on besides the dark places in her life, but it was inevitable that they would catch up with her. It was just a matter of how, and when.

"I know," Regan muttered, though the idea was still sour in her heart, and the memory of those empty eyes made her stomach turn over. "And I shall go... it is no touch on what I owe to him, to be there now, but... that is not my brother."

Few enough things caused her to wonder, to wish, that she were different from herself, as she'd never known else, nor that she was so very different from other people for a long part of her life, but the concept of saving Gwen the sort of hurt that seeing Tristan must cause her was one of them. She would never know, and indeed anyone around scarcely would, that Gwen felt anything, were it not for their closeness and the faint hum her heart's sister always gave off, but she had seen the love that had been, and felt keenly her own share of its absence.

"Nor the man you loved, and I am sorry for you to have to see him now," she added after an aching silence, brushing her lips across Gwen's cheek.

"I am not sorry to see him," Gwen replied, voice softer than it was usually wont to be. "I am pained by what has happened to him, but it is not hopeless, and I could never be sorry to see one whom I loved, no matter if they can recognize that love, whatever its shape now, or not."

Sighing, Regan laid her small hand lightly along Gwen's face, her eyes mirroring the solemnity in her friend's. "You are a better person than I, for I am afraid to see him, though I know I must, and that it might be helpful to him. I remember too much, and it makes me nervous to think of being so near."

"You don't have to go yet," Gwen assured her, setting her hand over Regan's. "And if you'd like me there, as always, I will be there."

"Isn't it time for me to grow up, now?" Regan asked wearily, wishing the idea were not such a difficult one. She wanted, desperately, to simply cling to Gwen and let everything be taken care of around her, as she always had, but knew that she could not for much longer, and certainly should not.

"We are all growing up all the time," Gwen said, eyes brighter as she dipped her head to add, "have you not seen my brother and Bishop? They both still have quite a way to go, no?"

Smiling reluctantly, Regan countered, "Yes, but I think no amount of growing is likely to cure them of... themselves."

Chuckling, Gwen brushed a kiss to Regan's brow. "Aptly put, dear one."


Summary: Gwen and Regan take time out to discuss a few pressing issues and get in some quality cuddles.