1920's AU
I was just gonna write a little bit and things kind of went overboard. Pun intended.
We used to wait
The ocean was angry.
It rumbled and sand and made the ship fret like a rodeo horse locked up in the pen. The deck he was standing on did an anxious overhaul as they cut another wave with the stern of the ship.
The water made a wheezing sound as it disbanded, sounding, not unlike a horse.
He thought about his own horse that he'd left back at home, Checker, and his mood was sullied further. He liked horses but he didn't like the sea.
He straightened up, let the breeze try and wash away his uneasiness away. At home, two days ago, the trip had seemed like a brilliant idea but that was before he'd seen the actual ship. It was thin, an impossible design as it stood upright in the water. On the docks he'd looked around to see if anyone had noticed the blatantly faulty design but it didn't seem they had.
In his mind the ocean was a blue ordeal, and it had been an experience to find that it was not. It was black.
"Sir, would you consider paying a visit to our restaurant?"
The man turned around, his pristine white suit covered in a faint layer of mist from the abundant sea. He was still firmly holding the railing with his hand.
"For your own comfort, sir. The view isn't agreeable this time of day." The man that had spoken was in his twenties, wearing the blue embroidered suit of the ship staff. He was right about the weather too, the horizon was a gray haze, cut short by the damn water. The morning was cold and he agreed to go inside, reluctantly. He felt better when he could actually see the water instead of just feel it wrecking havoc. He turned his back on the barren endlessness of the Atlantic.
They walked across the deck, empty except for them. The careful morning light, hindered due to heavy clouds, did little for the atmosphere. He passed through the delicate glass doors with wooden ornaments that were held open for him. Behind the long glossy bar desk was an ivory clock. It was little past seven.
He was seated by one of the tables closest to the door and was immediately attended to. He asked for a coffee, nothing else. As the waiter went to get his order he spent a couple of minutes watching the other people in the hall. The room was littered with businessmen, evenly spread out, all in a bubble of their own with the newspapers laid flat in front of them. Their breakfasts had either been forgotten or devoured straight away. Two tables away to his right a young man cautiously took thin-looking papers out of a long tube. He watched as the blond, vibrant looking and vibrantly dressed with his shirt sleeves slipped up to his elbows and equally befitting tousled hair, rolled the contents out across the table. He looked expectantly at the man sitting across from him, for judgment of some kind. The other man, older, with gray hair reminiscent of the morning fog, let his finger run across the paper. Whatever they were looking at it was closely inspected.
"This one's a bit off," he suggested mildly. "And you should keep an eye on the vault, to avoid any unnecessary strain on the load-bearing walls."
The young man nodded quickly. They went on to speak about things which held no meaning to him.
On the other side of the room, in one of the more private booths, a woman was sitting with her aide. Beside her an arched window bathed her in serene morning colors. Her bright hair was tied up and she ate slowly to avoid spilling on her modest white dress. He got his coffee and drank it slowly.
Every time he blinked, he thought of the sea.
After lunch he decided to take a walk. The fog had lifted and the sky was clear. Outside on the deck it was windy but not unpleasantly so, it was a happy breeze that pulled on the women's skirts and ran away laughing. He stood by the railing again, enjoying the faint rise and fall of the ship.
It clacked from light steps behind him.
The girl from the restaurant. He stepped to the side to let her enjoy the view, then looked around for her companion. She sat farther back on a bench, watching them with a prickly expression.
"It's my mother," the woman said, having seen where he looked. "She dislikes the sea."
She spoke distinctly, with a conviction of the nature of things. "I think she's afraid of falling in," she added like an afterthought.
Unsure of how to reply to her indifferent comment, he changed the subject. "Where are you headed?" He asked lowly, for he sensed that surfaces became ice under her feet and he was afraid of slipping up.
He gazed off into the distance, not wanting to seem too eager, but when she didn't reply he looked back at her.
Her glove-clad petite hands curled around the railing, ivory against oak, fermented contrasts. He waited.
"Washington," she said eventually. All the previous defiance was washed away. Left was something less tangible.
She lifted her head, corrected her guileless hat, that too white, making her look even paler. She searched for his eyes. "What about you?"
"I'm staying in New York," he said. He'd take up residency by the family estate, a barren house that filed respect in fellow men. He'd seen pictures of it, of the supposed grandeur.
"How do you earn your living?" she asked, and he was glad that she did. He was thankful for getting the incentive taken off his hands.
How would he earn a living? He'd never thought about it. The future had seemed like a faraway texture, immobile and distant. Men his own age were busy studying, earning a diploma. He couldn't think of anyone he knew that had begun working at his age. He was in his early twenties, there was no rush.
"I..." he dragged the word out, to give himself time when there was none. It felt like a sin to admit it, that for the moment he did nothing at all. "I'm unemployed," he offered instead. Was this how you did it?
"Hm," she said. His suit burned on him, a suit he'd thought was nice but as he saw it through her eyes it felt expensive enough to look cheap, the double buttoning so rigid in its wish not to seem easy.
"Then what will you do when you arrive?" she continued.
Where did she come from, to ask such callous questions?
"I don't know," he confessed.
"No?" she asked, her question lathered by amusement, he didn't know if he was being laughed at.
"No," he said, agreed with her on the silliness of his vacant days.
Unsurprised at the answer she gripped the railing harder, as if less space to the enclosing construction would allow her to surpass it. In the white dress her appearance was that of a bird pressing its elegant feathers, tattered by captivity, against the bars of its cage. She sighed, a heave of her chest that was laced with compliance. She was not a bird and she could not fly away. She knew that now.
"What do you want?"
He didn't know. He told her so.
"You don't know a lot." The way she said it, it sounded like an admonishment, of a suspicion upheld and cataloged. She didn't seem to mind, he told himself, but didn't know what that said about her.
"I don't think I do." He found himself agreeing, found it odd that talking to a stranger could allow him such ease.
She chuckled, couldn't believe her thoughts but spoke them anyway. "Good thing you knew enough to buy a ticket."
He laughed.
Seemingly pleased, she coyly peeked down at the surface of the water, leaning out the tiniest bit. He opened his mouth to tell her be careful! when a gale swept up and ripped the hat from her pinned-down hair. She straightened up, "My hat!" but she was alone by the railing.
He ran after it, it flew in over the deck, cruised above the heads of surprised guests. He quickly made his way through the crowd, brusquely shoved a person out of the way when he saw that the hat had gotten stuck in the net for a lifeboat. He picked it down from the air, trying to brush it off the best he could while walking back. Despite his best efforts it was still a bit stained from its rendezvous with the dirty net.
"There you go," he said calmly.
"Thank you," she replied shakily, looked down. "You shouldn't have."
"It seemed dear to you," and he didn't know why he said it.
She turned the hat over in her hands, inspecting the damage. "What's your name?"
"Sasuke." He cleared his throat. "Sasuke Uchiha."
"Nice meeting you, Sasuke."
He liked the way his name sounded, said like that. "You too."
She nodded, then excused herself.
He watched her leave.
They had redecorated the dining hall for dinner, living candles stood on every table like proud furnace, giving off a homely light. The waiters trickled around the tables on their eternal march.
He was seated in the middle, to his right an elderly couple, to his left was the girl and her adamant mother. He ordered food but forgot what he said as soon as the words left his mouth.
She had changed into a new dress, this one revealing her distraught shoulders. He couldn't see her face.
Her mother was the only one speaking. "What would your father say? Such a lowly idea. Do you not care for this family?"
He saw her proud head bowed further, bending before her responsibilities. "Of course I do, mother."
They were quiet. Other voices took their place.
"I will have to speak to mr. Braden about that, I think what he's asking for is just too much."
"I was driving to Chicago when I saw a little diner and I thought, why not?"
"And we simply must visit the theater, I've only heard good things-"
All the noises turned to one, a sound as non-committed as a wave washing up on the shore. They delivered his dinner and he was chewing on a particularly somber piece when the girl's mother started up again.
"A 'painter'? She wheezed, her disdain as sharp as an ice-hack. "I won't tolerate this kind of behavior. You don't want Mr. Simmons to regret this whole affair, do you?"
The answer, a quiet "no," was a door slamming shut, a spoken resignation of the fact.
"I got married when I was your age as well." She waited for a response, didn't get one. She continued; "Also, these people aren't strangers. You've met Stephen."
Her daughter stayed quiet despite her careful nudges, her partial attempts at setting things right. The silence persisted.
She was getting married.
He set the glass back down, robbed of a dream he hadn't known was there at all.
So?, he thought. What does that have to do with me?
When he looked up from his plate the sounds of the restaurant washed over him, a tittering cacophony of speech and metal clinks and porcelain complaining. It had nothing to do with him.
Nothing, and everything.
He'd thought about it, and come to terms with it.
He looked out across the infinite sea washing up on the shore, so pallid in its attempt to conquer the land like the humans once had done. Far away Elli's Island could be seen, their harbor and an ending point.
What would become of him, in this country?
He found he didn't care.
It was trivial, but he wished he knew her name. Knowing her name, knowing who she was, he'd be sure as to what he was missing. He felt like a child, unknowing of the limitation of wishes, sorely disappointed once he learned what no meant.
The boat stuffed on, balancing people and baggage and more abysmal entities, husbands and daughters, dreamers or pacifists, all in their last moments of the trip. The man didn't care, he ran past them all, frantically searching because she had to be somewhere. She had not yet been displaced to a dot on a map far away from him.
He checked the restaurant, the walking deck, now littered with cooing people admiring the view, he even drummed down the stairs to the lower decks where people stayed in berths and not staterooms. The boat was slowing and about to dock, as he ran to the main exit he collided with the gray-haired man that had been surveying the scrolls, "sorry" he mumbled and rushed on, ignoring the indignant "Oi! Apologize properly!" that the man's protégé let out. The families and companies melted into one big mass, impossible to overview. Farther away he saw a white hat, the boat rocked when it was tied down. He got there, breathless, it turned out to be a woman in her thirties with worried eyes and braided brown hair.
The people continued leaving until he was the only one remaining in the lavish exit hall.
The summer got worse with each passing day, the grand oak-trees in the avenue petulantly reached out, shading the littler ground and the even littler people. The trimmed flowering hedges scattered its white petals across the grass, the smell made his nose itchy and he hurried as he passed them by. He lifted his head. There was an automobile coming down the gravel road, making the pebbles crunch under its tires.
He got up, went through his list of acquaintances that might be coming for a visit. Had he forgotten an appointment?
He heard a car door being opened. A man's voice: "Here we are, miss."
Miss?
He rounded the corner, saw the car and stopped. From the cool interior of the car, she had stepped out. This time she wore a blue dress, her white hat now clean. Her expression was one of slight doubt, but also curiosity, at marvel of the world and what it meant to take a place in it.
"How did you find me?" he asked, but he wanted to ask why, why why
"Your name is uncommon," she said, he noticed that the wind stole the sound of her voice so he stepped closer. He didn't want to miss a thing. He couldn't remember her green eyes looking as torn or as unbending.
"I... I wanted to ask for your name," he said, and found that her smile became her, that she looked dauntless because she was, "On the boat, I mean," he added.
"Sakura."
"Just like the trees," he blurted out, far from the regulations of his status.
She looked down on her shoes, the angle so that he could only see the edge of her hat, and then at him again. A smile was playing on the outskirts of her lips. "Just like the trees," she said.