Spoilers for pretty much the entire series. Set during EP5.
I own nothing.
The delicious aroma of black tea filled the glass room, wafting across the table towards him. That was the first thing Battler became aware of when first he woke. He had forgotten the smell. He had forgotten a lot of things since facing oblivion, and while the smell of black tea seemed trivial compared to, well, pretty much everything else, he'd missed it a lot. He missed small things like that.
"Did you want some tea, Battler-sama?"
Battler forced his head up, blinking furiously to clear his eyes. He was sitting at a parlor table, much like the one he was used to sitting in across from Beatrice in her smoking room. However, it was not Ronove pouring the steaming tea into two porcelain cups. Neither was it Virgilia. Battler frowned. The person was slightly built, of medium height, with brown hair and a red cap. It was Kanon.
"Would you like some tea, Battler-sama?" Kanon asked again, holding a cup out to him. His demeanor wasn't the same as what Battler had grown used to. He did not keep his eyes slightly downcast as he was wont; neither did he employ that shrinking posture Battler was familiar with. Most striking of all was that Kanon did not stand at the side of the table, as a servant would. Instead, he sat at the table across from Battler, seeming no longer to care about social status or the strict propriety of the Ushiromiya family.
Battler nodded groggily. "Yeah, thanks." His hands shook a little as he reached out to take the cup from Kanon, but as they curled around the sides, they steadied, and he didn't worry about spilling it.
It tasted good. Battler didn't know why that surprised him, except that Kanon wasn't Ronove or Gohda; he'd not expected him to be as good at brewing tea as those two. But then… Battler peered at Kanon over the top of his cup, watching the young servant drink his own tea, without any care for the strict sense of propriety Natsuhi must have ingrained in him. This wasn't quite Kanon he was looking at.
Stupid! Battler wondered how he could have been so blind to it. How could he have missed the fact that he never saw Kanon and Shannon in the same place at the same time? How could he have not noticed that the two of them looked entirely too much alike for people who supposedly weren't blood relatives?
Battler frowned. From six years ago, he remembered her as having blonde hair. It had been getting darker with each passing year since they had first met, but it was still blonde in 1980. He wondered when her hair had finally turned color to come out as dark brown. He wondered when she had cut it so short.
He wondered how he could have missed so much…
"Argh!" Battler bent double, clutching his stomach as a shaft of pain tore through his front and out his back; there was a tinkling of glass shattering on the floor as he dropped his teacup. There was no blood, no wound, but the pain so intense that he might as well have been shot or stabbed. "What…"
"It is the pain of the sword in your belly." Kanon stared at him with impassive eyes, setting his teacup down on the table. The pain began to lessen, and Battler forced himself to sit up straight, forced himself to meet Kanon's eyes. His face felt slick with sweat; the smell was already beginning to rise in his nostrils, drowning out the aroma of black tea. "It is the pain you forgot when you stopped thinking. Now that you have started to think again, you have remembered the pain; it will become more manageable, the more you think." Kanon looked at him with a suspicious, distrustful expression in his blue-gray eyes. "Do not forget it again."
Battler shook his head too-vigorously, so determined to convince Kanon that he would not forget that his stomach churned from the aftermath of the pain in his stomach. "I won't."
Kanon's gaze drifted to the ground at Battler's side, covered by glass shards and spilled tea. "Do you want some more tea?" he asked quietly.
"No… No thanks. I don't really feel like having tea, anymore." Battler took a few deep breaths, as the pain did, as Kanon told him it would, drift down to more manageable levels, enough so that while he never exactly stopped feeling it, it was easy to push it aside and concentrate. He looked back at his companion, who was staring down into his teacup with an ambivalent look on his face. "So…" Battler wasn't sure how to go about this, wasn't sure if Kanon would answer any of his questions to his satisfaction, but he had to try. "…You and her…"
Kanon's eyes shot up, focusing intently on Battler's face, so intent that Battler had to fight to maintain eye contact. He wished that the scenery of the room was more interesting than it was, that it wasn't just glass showing dull, cloudy infinity beyond it; if his surroundings were more interesting, he might have had an excuse to look away.
No, I can't do that. I need to concentrate. I need to keep thinking. I can't stop thinking. I can't…
"I was, at first, a being without form." Battler was startled to hear Kanon speak, but told himself not to question it; he may well have been telling him this because Battler already had some suspicions about Kanon's exact nature from going over Beatrice's tales with a fine-toothed comb. If that was the case, and Kanon was just choosing to confirm his suspicions, than fine. "Someone for my creator to talk to, who would always be there."
Battler frowned. "But it didn't stay that way."
True enough, Kanon hadn't been around in 1980. Just the same, in 1980, Beatrice hadn't…
Battler swallowed. That was still hard to think about.
Kanon shook his head. "She was always looking for new experiences, something to stave off ennui and loneliness. Eventually, she wanted to try something different."
"She wanted to try being a boy," Battler supplied, staring down at the table.
It still seemed so strange to him. He'd never had such feelings, of wanting to be something else so badly that he went through with it, crafted an entirely different identity for himself. Maybe going to live with his grandparents after his dad remarried was something on that scale, but never had Battler imagined himself as a completely different person when he lived with his grandparents. Never had he called himself anything but 'Battler'; never had he made himself out to be a completely different person.
But she, she had been so uncomfortable in her skin; he remembered that about her, remembered it now, remembered how she had talked of faraway places and different lives, imagining herself as other people, better people, braver people, more important people living more worthwhile lives. He hadn't thought anything of it. When he was twelve, he was still fantasizing about being a fighter pilot who lived on a space station or some pre-teen version of Sherlock Holmes; how could her fantasies have struck him as anything out of the ordinary?
Just another thing I completely missed. Battler felt the by-now all-too-familiar pang of guilt deep in his belly, and somehow, it hurt worse than any sword ever could.
Kanon nodded, looking at him out of narrowed eyes. "That's right."
"You're…" Battler looked at Kanon's closed-off, cautious face, and felt his sense of guilt redouble. "…You're more like her than Shannon is."
"Yes, I am."
The girl he had known six years ago, he had known as Shannon. But she had had sharper edges, harder lines and more bitterness in her than the Shannon of 1986 could ever hope to possess. Battler could only see all that sharpness and bitterness six years later, when he thought about the girl he had known, and wondered if he had missed everything.
'Shannon' had become a completely different person between 1980 and 1986. It was true that she had been kind and loving, just as the Shannon of 1986 was kind and loving. But in 1986 Shannon was too soft, too sweet, her smile too bright and cheerful to even be a real smile, let alone the smile of the girl Battler had known six years ago. He wondered where that smile had gone. Kanon had her bitterness, her secretive nature, but he didn't smile at all.
And Beatrice wasn't quite her either. She had bitterness and sharp edges and hard lines, but she wasn't nearly so kind, and she was entirely too flamboyant. At least the girl he'd known six years understood subtlety.
Then again, maybe Beatrice's pitiful lack of subtlety in her behavior was just one of the things he loved about her, one of the things he found so endearing about her. Battler wondered if what and who he loved was real, or if that love was just affections plastered onto an image.
He decided that it didn't matter. If he loved her, that was enough. If she had been reaching out to him, willing him to understand, that was enough for him to understand that she wanted something from him, his acknowledgement, his understanding. That was why he still willed himself to think, when he had a sword in his belly.
"…Who… aaam I…?"
Beatrice had entrusted Battler with her last riddle. She had entrusted him with her last riddle. He had to solve it.
"How much do you remember?"
Kanon's tone was almost tentative as he asked that question, looking Battler over with his brow drawn up.
The answer was, simply: enough. Battler groaned and rubbed at his face. "The last time I was on Rokkenjima, six years ago, I said some pretty crazy stuff to her. I remember that. I said that I'd come back for her on a white horse and spouted off those stupid English phrases. But… But… It was six years ago!" He burst out, struggling against his guilt, his disbelief, trying to grasp at anything that would alleviate the former. "Kids make crazy promises to each other all the time! Didn't she know that? I can understand being upset! I can understand being pissed off! But shouldn't six years be long enough to get over that?!"
Kanon made no reply, at least not right away, but glared coldly at him. The atmosphere of the room seemed to change; the reek of sweat and the aroma of black tea dropped out of Battler's awareness. Kanon's glare, cold and steely as it was, was identical to the glare Beatrice had worn, when Battler was first confronted with the idea of something he had done six years ago being the trigger for the murders of his family and everyone else on Rokkenjima in 1986.
"W-what?" In all reality, Battler had a good idea of 'what', had a good idea of why Kanon was glaring at him like that. He couldn't help but say it. As much guilt as he felt, he had to do something to ease the weight of it.
"I suppose," Kanon murmured frigidly, "that it is easy for those with hope to trivialize promises made to those without it."
Battler looked away.
That was the crux of everything, wasn't it? That was the reason he had forgotten, while she had remembered. That was why he had given up the crush he'd had on her, and had nearly forgotten it entirely by the time he returned to Rokkenjima, while she could never forget, could never let go. It all came down to hope, and love. But why was she so bereft of hope? Battler had yet to solve that mystery.
"Was everything that happened really my fault, then?" he asked despairingly. "Did all that really happen because I broke my promise?"
"No," Kanon answered quickly. "That was part of it, but not all. Your presence or absence, your remembrance or forgetfulness, it lost its power to change anything long ago. Regardless, something would have happened in 1986. If you had come, say, two years earlier, if you had returned two years earlier and remembered, that might have changed the outcome. But by 1986, it really was…" Kanon hesitated, and pursed his lips before going on. "…By then, it really was too late."
Battler frowned. "Why two years ago? What happened two years ago?"
Kanon only looked at him.
That was another mystery that Battler had to solve by himself.
"I… I'm sorry," he mumbled. Battler swallowed hard and drew a deep breath, forcing himself to meet Kanon's eyes. "I'm sorry for everything that happened," Battler said quietly.
Kanon drew back in his chair uncomfortably, slight shoulders drawing up, frowning slightly. "I am not her," he told Battler, speaking quietly, uncertainly. "I am only a creation of hers. What sin you committed was not against me. I can not forgive you in her place."
"But you did feel her pain, didn't you?" Battler pressed earnestly, staring desperately into Kanon's face. "You may not have been the part of her she assigned that pain to, but you still felt it. I sinned against you as much as I did against her. If I want her forgiveness, I need yours as well."
The look Kanon gave him in response was not a glare, an uncertain look or a blank expression. It was one of wide-eyed shock. Kanon stared at Battler as though he had never seen anything quite like him before.
Then, he smiled.
Kanon's smile was sweet and gentle and bittersweet, tugging on his lips, not the broad grin of a boisterous teenager by the shy smile of a shy person. She had given him her smile. Battler had missed that smile so much.
"I am glad to see that you understand that much," Kanon said softly, and he spoke with a different voice. A voice close kin to one Battler had not heard for six years. "But unless you would like more tea, you should go now. You still have much to do."
Battler stood, nodding to himself, as the glass room, the table at which he had sat and the person he had spoken to all melted away. "Yeah. I've still got a lot to do."