A/N: This is a one-shot that takes place twelve years after the end of the far, I have written one on Prince Schneizel and Kallen and Gino, all of which can be found on my profile. Cornelia will be next. Enjoy.
Anya padded into the front room, wincing at the slam of the porch's screen door, dropping the mail on the coffee table, dropping her keys on the coffee table. Her shoes, the high heels of a professional, came off next, lying haphazardly in the doorway. The dark fedora was hung up on the hat stand in the hallway on her way to the kitchen. On tiptoes, she reached for a mug and poured coffee, black, its harsh, waking flavor so different from what she once loved.
And she had loved living on the orange orchard. It was peaceful, relaxing, and she had been gone, away from the world and all of the reminders of what it could have been, of what she could have been. But Sayoko and Jeremiah had been so, so in love, and she awful, like she was intruding on their lives, like she was the little adoptive sister who no one had the heart to get rid of.
So at eighteen, she got rid of herself, leaving the lands of her fathers to go to photography school in Europe, where memories were nonexistent and no one recognized her face. And as her fame grew—and grow it did, for the small pink-haired woman had talent, practice, and an interesting appearance to boot— she had hoped she would be happy.
Many would be in her place. She knew as a fact that many of her photographs had been purchased by some of the most famous collectors of art: Prince Schneizel had purchased a few for his private villa, and the Empress Nunnally had a whole collection in her palace. But she wasn't happy.
The coffee mug went in the sink, finished. She trudged, slowly, up the stairs, stripping along the way.
Her feet met the cold tile of the bathroom, and she faced herself in the mirror. Slowly and methodically, she wiped off her makeup with a waiting towel and took the pins out of her hair, watching as it fell down to her waist in a waterfall of cotton candy pink.
She once went through a phase, when she was younger and not yet resigned to her fate, where she went around to various circuses and took pictures of the food there. Not the clowns or animals, just the food, usually cotton candy. She had a whole useless collection of cotton candy, sweet at first but in the end gritty with a bad aftertaste. Just like her memories.
Her shower was cold, like always, and fast, like pulling off a band-aid. The fluffy blue towel dried her off quickly, so she didn't drip on the hardwood floors on her way to her bedroom.
She lay down on the carpet in the cool dark of her room, not even bothering to pull a robe over herself. Inhaling, she closed her eyes, smelling new carpet, lavender cleaning detergent, and her cherry-blossom shampoo, all smells mixing in the cauldron of her room. They weren't the smells of home.
To Anya, the smells of home were those of seawater, of oranges, or orchids, and—secretly-his pine tree cologne.
The crush that Anya had always fostered for Gino had grown into full-fledged love during the rebellion, a love which she knew, the moment she saw how he looked at the Ace of the Black Knights, would never be returned. He had been her sun, the one thing that kept her firmly planted in the world when she couldn't remember have of her lifetime and didn't want to ever remember any of it again, and then she came, the clouds on a cloudy day.
She didn't begrudge the pilots. She had traveled the world enough to see plenty of couples who didn't belong together and what happened to them. She wouldn't wish that on Gino, who doubtless would have done something stupid about it if she had told him her feelings for him.
And, just to make things worse, he had been calling her recently. He occasionally checked in, at Christmas, on her birthday, on his death day, to see how she was and the like. But this time was different; he wanted something from her.
She hadn't picked up, this time round, and if she saw him, she would tell him she had been out, but the reality was she always there, listening to his voice on the message machine as he asked her to call back.
She stood up, grunting. Time to pay the bills. Time to reject all of those invitations to damn parties. Time to face the music.
She turned the radio on in the kitchen, loudly, so she could hear it in the living room when retrieving the mail. She needed some true sound in her world of white noise.
She sorted through the mail: bills, bills, bank statement, bills, letter from the neighbor, invitation from a geography association, the Tokyo Times royalties, bills, more bills, a letter from Gino?
Holding her breath, she slowly opened the envelope. Out slid a gilded invitation, done up in cursive which was so very him.
She dropped it like hot iron.
It was wedding invitation.
Breathing carefully, she picked it back up. She was invited (cordially) to the wedding of Sir Gino Weinberg and Ms. Kallen Kozuki. It was this winter, not long after Gino's thirtieth birthday.
She flopped down onto her couch. She would have to go, for him. If she didn't show, he would need, deserve even, an explanation, and she could never tell him why.
She groaned. She would need to buy a new dress.
Her eyes closed, and she found that she didn't care that she was naked, falling asleep, with the doors unlocked and the blinds open.