Nights in White Satin
Disclaimer: I do NOT own Tekken, any of the characters or the title: Nights in White Satin. The former belongs to Namco while the latter belongs to The Moody Blues.
Summary: He had waited this long and so was content to wait however long it took for her to be ready to love him again.
Author's Note: Alright, this is my first real attempt at writing Tekken. I've had this idea since I found out Steve was Nina's child and this includes a pairing I've loved since first playing Tekken 2 way back when. This little reflection piece takes place after the sixth tournament and follows Steve's ending.
I would like to thank a very special friend of mine, LordGolbez, for helping me bounce ideas around and offering help when I needed it. I also owe much of my inspiration to The Moody Blues as their hit, and one of my favorite songs, Nights in White Satin, was the soundtrack for this; I literally listened to it the entire time I was writing this. *sighs* Unrequited love, what a muse.
I hope everyone enjoys this and please remember to review. (And please don't flame, I bruise easy.)
The first time he'd ever laid eyes on her, she'd been sitting in the restaurant of the hotel he was staying at. He'd yet to see her fight, didn't even know she was in Japan for the tournament for that matter, but he quickly became aware.
Her companion was a dark haired woman who bore a striking resemblance to her, though the brunette seemed to lack a certain je ne sais quoi that the blonde carried, a certain something that made men stop and stare.
She'd stopped him in any case.
To this day, many years later, he remembered sauntering up to the bar, arrogantly placing himself between her and the brunette and boldly wrapping his arm around her. "What's a fox like you doing in place like this?" It wasn't the best line ever but his reputation preceded him and women were usually aware of his status as a celebrity so it often got him in with the ladies despite its unoriginality.
An elegant eyebrow had lifted and an unladylike snort had come from her companion before the woman had risen slowly, taken his arm, flipped him over and calmly walked away with a posh air. She hadn't said a word but her actions spoke volumes and he had been caught in her web of allure ever since.
He didn't even find out her name until he finally had the pleasure of formally meeting her before the second King of Iron Fist Tournament. This second meeting had been infinitely more explosive.
She had been his training partner in the practice arenas set up months before the tournament began and, much like their first meeting, she'd floored him, quite literally. But this time he'd had enough sense about him to fight back as he now knew she was more than capable of holding her own. Their first practice match had ended with him hovering over her, trying to steal a kiss as she'd coquettishly taunted his style before mercilessly kneeing him in the groin.
If he hadn't been drawn to her before, that match held him captive. The sharp contrast between female warmth, which seemingly came so natural to her, and the iciness of the nature of her occupation, a trait significantly more forced than the former, sent him for a loop. Before her, he'd known women to be either flirtatious and welcoming or heinous bitches with no in between or happy medium but she was different.
For him it was a welcome switch-up despite how most men perceived her behavior.
They had grown close during that tournament, being forced to pre-train together, even venturing into romantic territory before her subsequent elimination at the hands of Kazuya Mishima. He could clearly recall countless evenings they had spent together up all night talking or finding purchase and the essence of life, not just mere existence, in each other's arms until the early hours of the morning.
She had been his best friend, or close to, and he could only wonder if those times meant just as much to her - it was always hard to tell. She was the first woman to ever see him as more than the bad boy astride a steel horse, a popular celebrity or even more simply: the street fighter in that one tournament, a stepping stone to a higher caliber of star or a more dangerous bad boy. This woman, this hard to get assassin, saw him for who and what he was: a man with a fragile ego and a torrid past who knew nothing, had no special skills apart from fighting.
Her entire being meant understanding for him.
In turn he liked to believe that he was the one person she opened up to, the one person who understood her. He had given so much of himself to her, was it unreasonable to expect that she'd given as much to him?
And it seemed so. He understood her intentions and motivations even better than her own sister and he admired her for the ways she'd overcome the trials of her childhood, the horror buried there.
During his exploration of her in these years past, he found that she was much kinder than she let on, she was simply a tough nut to crack but little by little he had chipped away at her shell during that fateful second tournament, even gaining the intimate honor of being her lover. However as cherished as that tournament had been, it was equally cursed.
At perhaps the most critical point of their relations, the decision of whether or not to continue their affair outside of the tournament, she was stolen from him. The Zaibatsu had cruelly taken her from him and he had feared she was lost forever...
...And in a way she was.
When she finally returned to his life, after years of searching for her, she was changed; colder, harder, harsher than ever was she and the worst part was that she didn't even remember him. The morale they had worked so hard to build was gone in one fell swoop and he wasn't sure what to do.
He'd spent years pining for her, writing letters she'd never read, looking for her. He'd turned over every rock, scoured every nook and cranny, every single location she'd ever mentioned during their time together and even went so far as to search for her sister, who too had seemingly vanished. She'd been his lifesblood, his reason for existing for nineteen years and in that time no other woman had been able to compare, despite his best efforts in later years to forget her and their reunion fell short of his imagination.
For the first time since the beginning of the King of Iron Fist, they met in an actual battle and it had dealt a critical blow to his already bruised and battered hope for them.
He clearly recalled approaching her at the stage, mere seconds before the fight began, speaking her name aloud in a sigh of disbelief, of relief, of being reunited...and then his soul had shattered when she had stepped toward him and uttered the most heart wrenching question he'd ever heard: "Do I know you...?"
Her face had expressed the confusion that her apathetic tone was too nonchalant to convey and he had laughed but it was a bittersweet sound. He would never know, for she would never tell, but her nonexistent heart had ached just listening to it.
Fate hadn't given him a chance to reply as the fight began and it had ended with her being thrown to the ground, more violently than he'd intended. It was all he could do to defeat Ogre and, in the end, he'd been so distracted that he'd departed for home, inadvertently eliminating himself from the tournament before Ogre's transformation.
She'd single handedly lifted his entire world up before sending it to hell in a hand basket in much the same manner.
In the years that followed, he became nothing more than a joke and found that his life held no meaning aside from diligently entering tournaments just to catch a glimpse of her. His participation in the fourth tournament did nothing but cement her fall away from him as she was even more distant than before and the fifth tournament garnered no new results. The sixth tournament came and went in a most literal flash of light, ending with his unexpected hospitalization at the height of his happiest moment since before she'd been taken from him.
Pride would never allow him to admit that he'd come to depend on her, on their memories together to sustain him. He'd become a mere shell of the confident, capable fighter he'd once been and, while unacceptable in his mind, it was something he couldn't help - and something Marshall had immediately taken note of but had the good grace not to mention.
In his apathetic and destitute state, nothing seemed to faze him - a fact that bothered Marshall, who'd known him far longer than anyone else, and Steve, a new friend who seemed to sense that who he was now had not always been who Paul Phoenix was. They didn't, couldn't understand but that didn't stop them from being all he had at this point. He hadn't seen or heard from either since being hospitalized, though and could only assume the worst.
He was thoroughly surprised when word of their well-being came in the form of an unexpected source.
On his seventh day of being laid up, she'd waltzed into his room, casual as ever, and sat in the chair beside his bed like it was her rightful place. He couldn't have been happier but his joy halted at the grave look on her face.
Did she still not recognize him? Had she regained her memories? If not, what was she doing here?
He tried to speak but found he couldn't, his throat hurt and his voice was hoarse from days of silence. It didn't matter for it seemed as though she wished to talk first anyway.
"Law is fine, if that's what you were wondering," she began tonelessly.
It took him a moment to comprehend what she'd said, the sound of her voice too big a distraction, but when he finally caught on, he began to shake his head. Clearing his throat and wincing at the sharp pain it caused, he once again attempted to speak. "And the kid?"
She nodded to confirm his safety.
"What are you doing here?"
Blue eyes flashed before averting their gaze and she was silent for a moment, prompting fear to flare within him.
Would she answer? Would she walk away?
Another minute went by, in which time she reluctantly brought her gaze back to him. "I heard about what happened." She paused and seemed unsure of herself and he felt the hope she'd squashed during the third tournament grow once again at the emotion on her face; she reminded him of the woman he'd met so long ago. "You need to know," she started before seemingly finding herself at a loss.
His hand lifted, as though to touch her and, at her skittish look, the hand quickly changed direction and he sheepishly scratched the back of his neck with it. "Do you even remember?" he wondered aloud. He wasn't sure what she had to tell him but it wasn't important if she didn't remember.
She looked stunned for a moment, like she was sure he'd moved on since his display at the third tournament - if only she knew. "I do,"
The hope that had steadily been increasing since the moment she walked in bloomed full force at that but quickly diminished with her next words.
"But you must know that I feel nothing..." she trailed off as if she were still coming to terms with the memories herself - her epiphany must have been quite recent. "You do need to know the reason for your accident, though. I owe you that much."
A strange look came over his face and he motioned for her to continue, "Do tell."
She became rigid at his forced nonchalance and he wasn't sure if it was because she wasn't as composed as she looked or if it was still that part of her that was like a little girl, hating any and all things serious. All of him wished it was both.
"Steve has been targeted by a Mafia syndicate for some events that occurred in England," she explained. "I've been trying to keep them from reaching him but I haven't been very successful...I've had other responsibilities as of late..."
A cold feeling overcame him as he recalled the news that she had been working with that Kazama kid and something akin to jealousy gripped him before his rational mind took control once again. "Why have you been involved? Steve didn't say anything about you being his bodyguard or anyone even being after him."
Part of him didn't really care why she was there, just that she was indeed there in front of him but another part of him yearned for answers, wanted to know everything that had happened with her from the moment she'd disappeared twenty two years ago.
Taking a deep breath, Nina bluntly informed him that she was Steve's mother and his jaw was still slack with shock when she revealed that he was the boy's father. They were parents, for lack of a better term, though perhaps donors would be more appropriate. Neither even knew of Steve's existence before the fourth tournament but it didn't stop him from feeling guilty and, from her slightly pained expression, she felt responsible as well.
Once the shock had settled and his brain began working normally again, he started to ask 'how' but stopped short, recalling the samples they were required to provide to the Zaibatsu before entry to each tournament. In any case, 'how' wasn't important and though it crossed his mind, 'why' didn't seem imperative either and 'when' was quite the no-brainer.
"So what do we do?" he asked after a while.
She shrugged as she turned back to him. "He knows I'm his mother but, as far as I know, he has no idea who his father is. Apparently it's classified information as you were not property of the Zaibatsu at the time. You can walk away from this scotch free and he'll never know-"
"But..." he prompted, sensing that her teetered-off statement wasn't quite finished.
"But I just thought you would want to know."
If he hadn't known any better, he would have sworn he saw crimson spread across her cheeks but that wouldn't be very Nina-like so he disregarded the notion altogether.
"Thank you," he murmured, still processing the news, all the while realizing that he was a selfish man for being happy at the revelation that they were forever bound by Steve's very being.
She nodded and rose to leave the room but, for some reason, Paul couldn't let her just leave with things the way they were; they had accomplished nothing, moved not one inch from where they had been since she walked in.
"I love you, you know." It was a point of fact, not a confession - he was only confirming what he suspected she already knew, no matter how indifferent and clueless she seemed.
After a spell of silence, she replied: "I know," before turning and walking to the door.
He shifted restlessly in the confines of his hospital bed, damning the injuries that prevented him from going after her. He would heal but by then she would be gone and it would be too late, if it wasn't already.
"Will we ever be what we once were?" he called out just as she opened the door.
She paused, back to him. "I don't know...I have to find myself again first. I have to figure out who I am before I do anything else."
He nodded, a gesture she sensed rather than saw.
He had waited this long and so was content to wait however long it took for her to be ready to love him again.