Whispering Children: LOVERS

by hakojo

"This was the first trip on which the Major had accompanied me not just as added security, but as…whatever we were to each other - I'd yet to find a word that truly fit the situation." Oneshot, f/f, SAC continuity.

私語く子供達 (Whispering Children); LOVERS

"Leaving us already, Prime Minister?"

I had congratulated myself too quickly on escaping the rest of the group relatively unnoticed; while most of them had been too tipsy to pay much attention to my quiet announcement that I was retiring for the evening, the Chief of Staff of the Maritime Self-Defense Force had still managed to corner me on his way back from the restroom.

"Yes," I said, giving him what I dearly hoped came across as a gracious smile. "Thank you once again for your hospitality today and for your company tonight – please excuse me."

"Not at all," he said. "Thank you for the honor of your presence here, ma'am."

Usually I would have responded further, continuing the cycle of pleasantries for another good minute and a half or so, but my entire day had been an endless exercise in formal politeness, and I was worn out; I bowed my head slightly, and then continued on my way.

I was in Yokosuka for the weekend, in order to visit the MSDF garrison there and make a speech to the full assembly of personnel about the problematic number of Chinese smuggling ships docking in Japan in order to supply domestic terrorist groups with explosives and other weapons, and the importance of staying sharp while trying to keep them away from our coast. While I had conceded the importance of this trip, I had also noted to myself that it could have been taken care of within a day – the only real reasons to have me there for the full weekend were more opportunities for photos as I made an extensive tour of the garrison, and, of course, the excuse for all of the officers and other staff involved to get together for dinner and drink.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed it had I been a member of their male power fantasy club and not subject to the harsh double standards which I'd long since grown used to. As a man in that setting, it would have been perfectly acceptable for me to get completely trashed on a combination of beer and sake and begin describing the latest extramarital affair I'd had in gruesome detail; as a lady, I was obliged to sit quietly and attempt to make polite conversation until everyone else had forgotten that I was still there, at which point I was free to leave them to their secret world and go to bed.

This disparity was one of the more prominent reasons why I had grown to detest these official visits.

Tonight, however, once I was away from the noise and headed toward my hotel room, I didn't mind it quite as much as I had in the past; I had a secret of my own waiting for me.

Mari, my assistant, had fallen into step just behind me when I'd emerged into the hallway; as I reached the door to my room, I turned and told her good night, to which she bowed respectfully.

"I've told everyone else not to disturb you, ma'am," she said. "If anything requires your attention, I'll inform you personally by cybercomm."

"Thank you," I said. "I appreciate it."

"Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Not that I can think of," I said. "But please, go and get some rest – you've been hard at work all day, and you must be exhausted."

"Yes, ma'am," she said simply. "Good night."

She bowed again and walked away.

I wasn't entirely sure how, or even if, bioroids experienced fatigue, but I would have felt rude asking. It just made sense to me that anyone who'd been awake and on her feet for as long as I had that day would feel as drained as I did by the time the day was over.

Well, almost anyone; Mari hadn't been the only one by my side today.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside.

The suite I'd found myself occupying for the weekend was quite nice; it was spacious and tastefully decorated, with a pleasant view of the city through the wide windows. Still, as I walked into the sitting room, my attention was entirely focused on the woman who waited for me there.

She sat on the low sofa, leaning to one side, her legs folded up underneath her, with a half a glass of what I assumed was bourbon sitting on the end table by her elbow. Her face was blank, and her eyes were dull and unfocused; she was either sleeping or Net diving, although I assumed the latter. I approached her slowly, trying to see if perhaps I could startle her.

"You're earlier than I expected."

No luck.

The light returned to her eyes, and she tilted backward, stretching her arms up over her head. I sighed and sat down next to her.

"I got away as quickly as I could. Much longer and I was going to lose my faith in humanity completely."

"Oh? That bad?"

I nodded. "Unless I'm just boring…"

She laughed shortly.

"I wouldn't entirely disagree with that."

"Oh, you're helpful. Just because you can drink whenever you want without feeling any of it…"

She gave me a mischievous smile, and then, as if to prove my point, picked up her glass, tipped her head back, and drained what was left.

Then, very deliberately, she moved forward and kissed me. I could taste the alcohol that still clung to her lips.

This was the first trip on which the Major had accompanied me not just as added security, but as…whatever we were to each other - I'd yet to find a word that truly fit the situation. "Girlfriends" was applicable to some extent, but it felt too immature; "lovers" was another possibility, but it too was ultimately inappropriate, for almost the opposite reason.

At any rate, the point was that we were together for the sake of each other's company, and not just because of some mercenary arrangement. While she had insisted on following me all day with her camouflage activated, just in case someone got it into their head to try and murder me, she'd also amused herself by reminding me of her presence every so often with gentle touches on my waist, shoulders, and, once, when she'd felt especially bold, the back of my neck.

She had never done anything like that before, and at first it was rather awkward; however, by the time we'd separated in order for me to join my hosts for dinner, all I could think of was getting back to her as quickly as I could.

It was quite strange.

Everything about this relationship was strange, but I found myself ignoring this fact more and more frequently.

She pulled away from me slowly, bumping the tip of her nose against my cheek.

"Go and get ready for bed – I'll wait for you."

One more bourbon-soaked kiss, and then she was gone, striding loosely toward the bedroom door. I watched her until she disappeared behind it, and then, in something of a lightheaded haze, got up and headed for the bathroom.

While I enjoyed her company, admired her vast range of talents, and had long since accepted the fact that I found her strikingly beautiful, there was nothing romantic between us. She was my escape from the demanding, double-edged world in which I lived, and what passed between us when we were alone was an expression of trust and solidarity, not love. I'd been in love before, and it had never felt anything like this.

Besides, she was a woman.

The frequency with which I needed to remind myself of this was starting to trouble me.

It didn't help that I had only a very vague idea of why she had agreed to this arrangement in the first place; even though we were open to each other when we linked, I wasn't anywhere near as adept at distilling information from the multicolored storm of light as she was, and all I was able to pick up was a fuzzy impression of my own ecstasy reflecting itself back to me, as if her cyberbrain was a mirror, with a touch of what I interpreted as a kind of voyeuristic thrill that she, as a cyborg, got from interacting so deeply with an organic body.

Sometimes when I lay with her, half asleep, our thoughts bleeding together at the edges, an idea flickered into my mind and then out again just as quickly; the idea of baring my body to her and letting her touch me…

I was never able to tell which of us the idea came from; to me, it was as if it formed on its own in the cloudy space between our ghosts.

In those moments, separated from my rational self as I was, I couldn't help but wonder if it would feel any different with a woman.

Later, I was always quick to remind myself that even thinking of such things was strictly forbidden. There was being intentionally reckless, and then there was being completely stupid. Not to mention that quite apart from avoiding the potential scandal, removing any of the ambiguity from the nature of this relationship would require me to make some rather uncomfortable admissions to myself.

It was much easier to just ignore this part of the situation entirely.

I finished dressing for the night, then wiped away my makeup, brushed out my hair, and crept into the bedroom.

She was waiting for me there; reclining on the side of the bed facing the window, surveying the skyline beyond with an intense expression, the glow from outside throwing her face into fierce contrast. Quietly, I sat down at her side.

"See anything interesting?"

"Not particularly," she replied, and then turned to me. "I'm going to stay on this side all night; on the off chance that there's a sniper out there that neither I nor your security people have managed to detect, if he tries to line up a shot, my body should stop the bullet before it gets to you."

I blinked. "Is this likely?"

"I wouldn't worry about it," she said, pulling herself upright. "It just goes against all of my instincts to let the Prime Minister of Japan sleep unprotected right in front of a room's only window."

"I see."

She had put the idea of snipers into my head, and I couldn't help the shiver that crawled up my spine at the thought; fortunately, she quickly realized what she'd done and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I relaxed into the warm, inviting hum of her embrace.

"You're letting your hair grow out," she said, after a few moments of absently running her fingers through it.

"Not intentionally – I just haven't felt like taking the time to get it cut." I sighed. "I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to keep it…"

"I like it," she said. "If you're going to cut it, though, you should just have the back cut short and leave the front alone."

I tried to picture this in my head.

"Like yours, you mean?"

"Sort of," she murmured; the tips of her fingers had become more focused, brushing aside the hair that covered the back of my neck to reveal the twin QRS plugs there. "It's just more….practical."

She touched her lips to the space in between the plugs, running her thumb across the one on the left.

I had always assumed that her odd hairstyle was merely for the sake of convenience; now I was beginning to wonder if it was the cyborg equivalent of wearing a backless dress or low-cut top.

"Ah, Madam Prime Minister appears to be blushing…"

Her thumb swept to the opposite plug, moving in tight circles around it. She leaned around and kissed me very lightly on the cheek.

"You ready?" she whispered.

"Mmm…."

Her hand moved away from my neck to withdraw the wire-thin cable from her own, and I closed my eyes, reaching up to hold my hair out of the way for her. As soon as she made the connection, my body began to tremble, sparking with nerves; carefully, she helped me to lie on my side, and then pulled me close so that my back was tight against her chest.

It always began gradually – first the sensation of gentle pressure, as my cyberbrain adjusted to the intrusion of another consciousness, and then the feeling of blurring at the edges, as if I was a blot of ink that had fallen onto a wet sheet of paper. I sat there, small and dark and unassuming, gradually fading out into my own little world of white, until, just when I thought that I was going to melt away entirely, everything exploded into color.

A vibrant tangle of color, which splashed in haphazard patterns, setting my perceived senses ablaze as it flooded my mind. What had been just a tiny dot of grey swelled and ran together with the rest, bleeding into scarlet, violet, azure, and a host of other colors beyond visibility entirely. The whole mess twisted and writhed across the whiteness, shifting between a uniform whole and an entire liquid spectrum, leaving a field of delicate, lacy patterns in its wake that shifted like beads in a kaleidoscope.

This was the best way I could think of to describe it, although I doubted that words could convey the sensation as I truly felt it.

I knew that I'd never be able to say exactly why it felt so utterly brilliant, only that it did, and that without someone else to pull me back, I probably would have let myself dissolve into the wash of color and left everything else behind.

I was close. I had blurred out so far that barely anything held me together anymore.

Then, as gently as it had begun, the storm of color faded away again, and I returned to myself.

I kept my eyes closed, as I wouldn't be able to see much for a little while still; all I could really do was lie still, gasping for breath, with the Major's arms around my waist, holding me steady through the dizziness. She had never been able to clearly explain why this happened; the most I understood was that linking so deeply with another cyberbrain created some confusion in the physical processes managed by my own, and that this was simultaneously responsible for the disorientation and the feeling of detached euphoria. I had of course asked her if doing this was dangerous at all – she'd assured me that she had plenty of practice, and that she'd always stop long before I had a seizure.

We lay together long after my head stopped spinning, still linked, but separate from each other. She liked to stay with me until I fell asleep, although tonight, I thought, was the very first time I would drift off knowing that she'd still be there when I woke up the next morning.

It was odd; no matter how hard I tried to hold onto that thought, it felt as though the rest of my mind wanted to push it away in favor of other things - strange little snippets of things, like what I'd done that day, or important events from the day before. I could think of nothing that linked them to what I'd been thinking about in connection with this moment, and when I concentrated on it, I could almost feel another presence pushing them around…

My eyes snapped open.

"Major."

The activity in my cyberbrain froze. I'd thought so.

"What is it?" she said, trying to sound innocent.

"You were organizing again."

"Start doing it yourself and I won't be tempted." She tapped me lightly on the back of the head. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to work in that mess? Imagine coming into your office and finding everything thrown on the floor, with Mari standing there like an idiot insisting that she knew where each individual document was."

I sighed. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to start thinking of your own head as a filing cabinet after a good thirty-some years of letting everything just sort itself naturally?"

"No."

"Well, then, how would you like it if I came into your apartment and started organizing all of your possessions?"

"Hey, if you want to tackle that mess, you're more than welcome. Maybe we should trade – I'll finish sorting everything in your cyberbrain, and then you can come over and clean out my place."

I blinked. "The apartment of yours that I saw didn't look so bad…"

She kissed me lightly on the neck. "That's because you didn't see the part I actually live in."

A year ago I never would have pictured her as disorganized in any way; she had always seemed to me to be the perfect image of simple efficiency. Now that I knew her a bit better, however, the idea of her home being a cluttered mess was not only somewhat plausible, but oddly charming as well.

It reminded me of those quiet, cozy nights, years ago, that I'd spent at my future-husband-then-boyfriend's apartment – I'd come over late in the evening, after my shift at work; we would eat together, and then I'd attempt to straighten up as much of his mess as I could.

"How adorably misogynistic."

I'd forgotten that the Major was still listening in.

"Sorry," she said, in reaction to the annoyed embarrassment that had flooded my mind. "I was curious. You usually keep him out of sight."

"Well, there are reasons we're no longer married." I said quietly.

She laughed shortly. "Was one of them that you got tired of waiting on your man?"

"It was more complicated than that."

At least, it had seemed complicated at the time; looking back on it, especially now that I was older and much wiser, it was incredibly simple.

"Well," she said, "now I'm extremely curious."

My heart seemed to jerk awkwardly in my chest; the last time I had told anyone about my husband, it had been so they could erase all records of us ever having been together, in preparation for the intense media scrutiny that would occur before I was appointed Prime Minister.

"I just assumed you knew everything already," I said. "The data can't be that difficult to reconstruct, for someone like you…"

"Oh, I'd considered looking into it," she said, "but I decided I'd rather hear it from you personally. If you feel like sharing, that is."

I stayed silent for a few minutes; we were still linked closely enough that I could tell she would listen if I wanted to talk, but if I didn't, she would be more than happy to leave me alone and just hold me while I fell asleep.

I sighed heavily. She was probably the only person I could ever tell about him anyway.

"You have to promise that you won't think any less of me after this," I said.

"As if I have any respect left for you to begin with," she countered.

"Fine."

I took a deep breath.

"His name was Yasuo. We met shortly after I turned 20; he was one of my English teachers in college. I used to meet with him after classes to practice speaking, and…it turned out that we really enjoyed talking to each other. Eventually I started coming to see him at his apartment as well."

It had always sounded less awful in my head. I waited for her to comment, but she seemed to be saving it for when I finished the story.

"Even there, it really was just talking – literature, political science, things like that. We'd go on for hours. I had never really had friends before, and the idea of someone wanting to spend time with me was more than a bit overwhelming. Especially someone like him…"

I struggled for a few moments to try to put him into words, and then remembered that the Major and I were still connected, and that emotions would do just as well. A feeling of clarity seemed to wash over her, and then she signaled for me to continue.

"He left to go teach in England during my final year of school, but he told me that he'd write me letters, so that I could keep practicing with him; we wrote back and forth the entire year he was away. At the beginning of the year he was still writing to one of his students, but by the time he wrote to tell me that he was coming home, we'd somehow become lovers, just through the letters. He asked me to marry him the same night he arrived in Japan."

I tried to hold back the memories of what else had happened that night, but I wasn't nearly fast enough - they trickled through the link like grains of sand slipping through my fingers, even as I tried to gather them up, and I could feel my entire face reddening. The Major touched my hand gently.

"And you said yes."

"Of course I did. I'd never had so much as a boyfriend up until then, and I was so in love with him that I could barely breathe, let alone think clearly."

A flash of something like sympathy passed from her to me, and I wondered briefly if she knew what this was like.

"So…" she said quietly, "how long was it before you realized that you'd made a mistake?"

"A few months," I said. "I began to realize that we were at different stages in our lives entirely; I was barely out of college and wanted to get some actual use out of the law degree I'd worked so hard for, and he was already at the point where he wanted a wife who'd walk his children to school every morning and then have supper waiting for him when he got home at night. I loved him, very dearly, but that wasn't me, and it wasn't going to be anytime soon."

"I see."

She seemed utterly fascinated by the story, as overly dramatic and embarrassing as it was for me to relate.

"We didn't actually separate until more than a year later," I continued. "I'd explained to him when we got married that I was going to keep my own family name, and at the time he was fine with this. However, when he realized that I wasn't going to leave my work for him, he started to bother me about it. He said that I was being selfish, that if I was serious about our marriage I'd use his name….he managed to bring it up almost every other day."

"And that was when you left him?"

I shook my head. "I switched. I was Yoko Ueda for all of a week before I felt so sick with myself that I couldn't do it any longer. That was when I left him. A lot of people thought it was a silly thing to divorce someone over, but…"

"I don't think so," said the Major, very softly. "Personal names are more closely associated with people's ghosts than they often realize."

An emotion somewhere between nostalgia and regret shot between us. There was something more lingering in her mind, but she wasn't going to tell me, and I knew better than to ask her.

"It was more than that," I whispered. "My father was the one who named me; my mother changed my first name after he died, and my family name is all I really have left of him. That someone I respected as thoughtful and intelligent would ask me to give it up…it felt like a betrayal."

"So you gave up on men entirely?"

A sick, sour feeling rolled itself up in my stomach. This was even worse. The answer to her question floated into my mind before I could stop it.

"Oh, I see. Just on commitment."

I wished she didn't find the whole thing so amusing.

"It's in the past now," I mumbled. "All of it."

The feeling of sympathy touched me again, more strongly than it had before, warming me. Her fingers curved around my arm, squeezing gently.

"Then it's nothing to be embarrassed about."

"Right…"

Even as closely as we had linked over the past several months, the idea of lying in bed together, having this conversation, was one that had never occurred to me, and I felt awkward and out of place. At the same time, however, I couldn't help but wonder if she had a history she wanted to keep secret as well – perhaps that was why she'd been so interested in mine.

"To tell you the truth," she said slowly, "Everyone up until my two girlfriends."

She spoke very quietly, and I understood immediately that this was something she'd never told anyone else either.

"It was the same for me as it was for you - for everyone, I think. You seek out the feeling of being wanted, even if it's just for one night, with someone who won't remember your name the next morning. Eventually you realize you're lying to yourself, and at that point you can comfortably leave your idiot boyfriend of the past year, move to another city, and restart your life as best you can."

She spoke as though she still had vivid memories of that exact scenario.

It wasn't entirely dissimilar to what I'd done myself, although I had had the added threat of political scandal involved to keep myself from relapsing.

"So, what about your girlfriends?" I said, closing my eyes; I was starting to feel drowsy again. "What made them so special?"

"I'm still trying to figure that out," she said, draping her arm over my waist. "It might just be the age-old saying that opposites attract. Want to see them?"

An image appeared in my mind of two young women, both dressed rather provocatively; from the crowded, dimly lit background, it looked as though they were at a bar or club or similar kind of establishment. One was taller, with deep chestnut hair and a very bold manner – she had her arm around the waist other, who had short hair the color of warm honey and appeared almost overwhelmed by the excitement of her surroundings.

"Cute, aren't they?" said the Major, as if she was showing me a picture of her cats as opposed to women with whom she was engaged in an intimate relationship. "The one on the left is Ran, and on the right is Kurumi – she makes me call her Kurutan."

I managed to force back the tiny stab of jealousy before she noticed it.

"They're very pretty…and I wasn't expecting to see…well, they're together…"

"They have been since before we met – I'm their mutual girlfriend. That way they have each other to annoy when I'm out of town for long periods of time."

"….I see."

It seemed like an extremely strange way to handle a relationship, but it also seemed to be working well enough, so I made no comment.

"They've been asking me, though," she continued, tightening her arm around my waist, "what exactly has been diverting all of my attention from them these past few months."

Her lips brushed the back of my neck, and I smiled.

"Mmm…what do you tell them?"

"That it's a very important matter of national security."

I laughed quietly, although I wasn't entirely sure if the sound made it out into the open; we were blurring together again, and I was starting to lose track of my senses and how they related to my physical body.

Security…

"…Major?" I whispered after a few moments of silence.

"Hmm?"

"Tomorrow…are you going to follow me around all day again?"

"I hadn't planned on being anywhere else. Would you rather I didn't?"

"No…" I said. "I don't mind it at all…I just don't want you to feel like you're working, especially since I'm not paying you for this…"

"I'm not working," she said, a hint of amusement in her voice. "I'm spending time with you."

She pressed her consciousness into mine again, and I let myself drift off into the wash of color once more.

While I had thought that the relationship she shared with her girlfriends was rather odd, when I gave it some consideration, ours was hardly any more conventional. It was neither casual nor a serious commitment – it was two people who came together over and over again because they had something to offer one another, even if this 'something' was at times unclear. There was no word for what we were to one another; how could there be, when it changed from encounter to encounter?

No single word could ever describe such complexity.