_Restless Hearts_
~Oneshot~
-Disclaimer: This is my 7th fanfiction, and hopefully not the last, so of course I don't own Shaman King.
-Rating: T
-Genre(s): Angst, Family.
-Pairing(s): RenxJeanne, JeannexMen mother-son. AU.
-Summary: Say it ain't so, say I'm happy again.
A/N: This is dedicated to rhiannon-harmonica, my awesome rant buddy, SK fan and fellow Gleek. (not to mention her awesome SasuSaku stories. Have I said I love SasuSaku too, hon? :X) Hope you like the Angst.
Title from Journey's song "Faithfully". I don't own the song.
See the end for more A/N, but read the fic first!
Also, I'm being extra cruel and killing off someone again. Seriously.
It all started with a letter. An almost cruelly polite letter, with immaculate grammar and spelling in printed words, saying that somebody was so sorry, and that her 3-year-old son would never see his father again.
(She still keeps that letter in a drawer right next to her bed, their bed, and still pulls it out every once in a while no matter how wrinkled and tear-streaked it has become.)
The letter started 2 weeks of her crying relentlessly and never leaving the bed. His sister dropped by once every several days, mostly to sit beside and try saying soothing words to her, even though she was crying herself, and the rest of the time to sob into her nephew's small, cotton-clad shoulder, as the little boy looked at the trembling, broken heap on the bed that was his mother with eyes wide and clear.
(Those eyes, even though in her eye color, are still so much like his it hurts.)
It kept going like that until 2 weeks later, when his urn was sent to them, and she found that she was too exhausted mentally and physically to even cry.
She dug a small hole in their backyard, on which the sunset would shine every afternoon, and put his remains there, because she knew it was his favorite spot. When she finally stood up and wiped tears from her eyes, which only left more dirt on her face, she knew that she would have to live on. They would have to live on.
(It is harder than she's ever known.)
She lost weight and looked basically like a walking dead for a while before his sister determined that she had to eat, had to stay healthy. She obliged, face emotionless, the bowl of soup in her hand.
(The heat of the soup seemed to be burning her limp fingers; his warmth was so much more comforting.)
The spoon in her other hand fell to the floor with a loud clank that she could barely hear, she was trembling so hard.
Men stumbled his way onto her lap, touching her face with his tiny fingers. His eyes were wide as ever and he gave a half-smile when he managed to wipe some teardrops off of his mother's eyes.
As she held her son in her hand, she wasn't crying anymore.
She walked into the kitchen for the first time after his remains had been buried. She looked around, it was dusty and mostly empty; that was his favorite chair; there was the low chair he used to sit on to feed Men whenever he had the chance to be home; the empty milk bottles, and that spot at the door where he always suddenly held her in his arms, after Men had been tucked into bed. And she couldn't take it because this pain was too much, everything was too much; and she just stood there trembling, clutching her heart and gasping, but no tears were falling, because tears wouldn't bring him back, tears wouldn't make this any less hurtful, tears wouldn't blur the image of him, so fresh and lively in her mind, everywhere in their home.
Her son knows everything. He is very smart, just like him. And just like him, her son is not necessarily sensitive. He doesn't always hold her hand or hug her when a tear leaves her eyes, but ever since he went to school, he has always held a perfect record.
He knows everything. He knows about that piece of paper his mother keeps and cries to almost every night, he knows the small, flower-covered piece of land that a part of his father rests. But it is painful, so he doesn't allow himself to think about it so much.
(He does know that the pain basically rips his heart apart.)
Men's first essay for school received an "Average" review, because it "did not live up to the expectations that the country has on youngsters to acknowledge and support certain values."
('The war took away my father, left my mother with the soul wounds that will never heal. In my opinion, war should not be considered a good thing, at all.')
She hugged him very long after reading it. He told her not to cry, and that he liked it when she smiled. The smile reappeared, but when she put her head on his little shoulder again, he could still feel the warm wetness creeping into the fabric of his shirt.
(His eyes were filled with tears, too, but he quickly drew his hand over them, because the Taos don't do crying.)
Things went crazy sometimes.
Those were the times when she found herself standing in the kitchen, preparing dinner. In a split moment, she looked at down at the sliding knife in her hand, mind hazy and wondering how it would feel to shove that knife into her own flesh.
(It would be blissfully fast, coming to him.)
But then she always heard her son sitting at the table behind her, clicking empty milk bottles together, waiting for dinner. It gave her sanity. It reminded her that she would have just died a million times more if she had left him alone.
(She knows how it is to be an orphan.)
She was once asked if she wanted to move on. She was still young and beautiful, and he would want her to take a second chance at happiness.
His mother told her that much, all the while wiping tears forming in her eyes.
(Ran never really gets over it.)
She looked at the mug of tea in her hands, stared at the deep emerald of it, and quietly shook her head.
No one could hold her like he did, no one could make her feel the way he did, and she would not cause both that 'no one' and herself pain for pretending that someone could ever replace him for her.
She hated rain. She hated the sound of it pounding on one of their old Chinese window frames because no one was there to fix them. She hated the stinging cold it caused, the cold that never seemed to go away no matter how tightly she clutched the covers around herself at night. She hated feeling vulnerable.
The rain was pounding on the door particularly hard that night.
The relentless knocking sound woke her up from her short slumber on the couch. She blinked the sleep from her eyes as she stood up, letting the cushion she was holding slip onto the floor. She was slightly annoyed that the person at the door-whoever that was, at this ungodly hour-didn't even bother to ring the bell. But when she flicked on the light and it wouldn't turn on, she realized that the power was out. Again. She sighed and made a mental note to get it fixed tomorrow.
She opened the door and saw nothing. She rubbed two fingers over her temples and smiled bitterly at herself. The lack of sleep was making her paranoid.
She looked up and saw, in the flickering light of the candle, a glimpse of something, something golden, something familiar.
Something that never left her mind for the last 8 years.
She stepped out into the rain. Blindly, shaking, she pushed herself forward.
And she just kept, kept shaking, because if it had been just an illusion, she would have been on the ground crying and breaking all over again by now. But there was something, someone holding her, their arms around her, the heat telling her it was not a dream. Someone so strange, yet so familiar, with their hair much longer than she remembered it. And so, so alive.
(Him.)
_END_
A/N: The inspiration of this is my Dad. My name was the last thing he called, in the hospital room full of uncaring people, and I wasn't even there. Mom still cried whenever we mentioned him.
But, I gave them a happy ending in this story, didn't I? So, please review! :D