Disclaimer: Noir and its characters do not belong to me. I love them dearly, but unfortunately they are not mine. I cry every night because of that, trust me. And to anyone who thought that last sentence was serious…I shun you. SHUN! Now I don't need to put up a disclaimer for every chapter, like I used to do a long, long, long, long time ago.
Note: I'm studying French, but I'm not very good at it. So if anything I'm saying is incorrect, I'd really appreciate someone telling me so that I can fix it. Merci.
Rappele Toi Toujours de Moi
Remember Me Always
Saya
Chapitre 1-si vous m'avez aimé jamais
Chapter 1-if you ever loved me
A tall woman wearing a black patch over her right eye stepped out from the shadows, holding the hand of a young blonde girl. They were dressed as if they were part of a church, but from what church is anyone's guess. "Yumura, it is time you fulfilled your promise," said the woman, though she glanced nervously at the child that clung to her.
The man and woman that stood opposite the strange pair in the dimly lit room exchanged nervous glances. A young boy clung to the woman's dress and a baby cried from the curve of her arms. "Please, don't take our children from us!" the woman shouted, tears streaming down her face. Her husband placed a would-be soothing hand on her shoulder but she twisted out of his reach. "Please!"
The woman with the eye patch looked nervously once again at the little girl who stood at her side with her hands clasped around the woman's. "Altena…" the woman said, as if trying to convince her of something. But the blond girl shook her head and glared sternly at the family standing before them. Lucky children, protected by their mother and father, believing that people like that could actually protect them.
A pocket watch sat on the table behind them, silver with two maidens engraved on the front. "The Soldats stated their price when you first made your agreement," this time it was the little girl who spoke rather than the intimidating woman she was with. Young though the girl was, her voice was mature and commanding, she would one day become very powerful, someone not to be trifled with. "It is time you paid your dues." Altena grinned inwardly. Yes, time to pay up. Time to destroy the happy family, to bring reality crashing down on them. The world wasn't full of rainbows and frolicking through flowers. It was filled with violence, war, destruction, hatred, disaster…
Altena looked at the one-eyed woman standing next to her, their hands still clasped together, and nodded. The woman stepped forward and took the child out of the woman's arms, "Kirika!" She reached out for her daughter, as the one-eyed woman placed the child in Altena's outstretched arms. The baby did not cry, did not scream. She just stared silently into the eyes of her captor.
"Kirika!" the woman cried again as she stepped forward towards the two maidens dressed in church clothing. The woman with the eye-patch snapped her fingers and more women donned in the same clothing stepped out from the shadows, from seemingly nowhere. Blades shone in their hands and reflected the dim light. The woman collapsed onto the ground and bowed her dark head so that she could not watch as some unknown strangers took her only daughter away from her; her flesh and blood, gone while her husband and son watched, not even trying to stop them.
"Altena," the one-eyed woman said as they stood outside the large mansion, the baby still staring silently at them, "why are you doing this?"
"Because someone needs to bear the sins of the world because the world cannot bear them herself," she replied, walking forward and not bothering to look back at the gloomy building behind them. That was one of the three saplings, they only needed one more, the third was expendable. Now it was just a matter of waiting, waiting to see who the next of the three children would be.
--
It was a long wait, but Altena was a patient girl, dangerously patient. For four years she waited and in the mean time, she trained the child in her possession to serve the purpose that was her entire reason for being at the Manor. Four years later, Altena sat alone in her office behind her oak desk while the sun shone through the window. A plant sat dying on her windowsill; she did not have the time to take care of it.
Kirika, the blond woman knew, was outside training. That was what the child did, that was what she lived for, that was her entire existence now. Altena smiled at the thought when a brunette came bursting through her office door. "She's here!" said the excitable newcomer.
Had it been anyone besides Altena, there would have been an exclamation of joy and a loud clatter as someone jumped up and the chair fell behind them, but as things were Altena pushed her chair back away from the desk and she slowly stood up. Elegantly, deliberately--that was the word--all of the young blonde's movements were slow and deliberate. Nothing was ever rushed; it was another of the many things that made her such a dangerous woman.
"Ah, the second of our saplings," she said kindly when she caught sight of a young girl with deep red hair clinging to her father's coat while the man tried to shake her off.
He finally managed to get his daughter away from him, "Take her," he said gruffly. Every family was different. This poor girl, living with a family that couldn't wait to get rid of her…Altena watched the girl sadly as she looked sadly at her father, her eyes begging him to take her back, to tell her what she had done wrong.
"Bring Kirika," Altena said to the woman beside her. She herself was fairly young, much younger than everyone else in the Soldats organization, but already more powerful than most. She turned to the new girl and smiled kindly, "Welcome, dear one. What is your name?"
The girl looking imploringly at her father once more before locking her eyes onto Altena's and almost immediately she seemed soothed. The young blonde had that affect on people; intimidating yet calming. "Chloe," the red-haired girl asked meekly. The second of the saplings. Altena refrained with much difficulty, and the aid of years of practice, from showing any signs of her true glee.
"So, will you take her?" the man asked impatiently. He took a step back when his eyes caught Altena's gaze. What a dangerous young woman.
But the conversation was interrupted before it even began by the arrival of the brunette with a five-year old girl in tow, Kirika. Chloe's eyes immediately widened with excitement at the sight of the other girl, who merely regarded them through her dark eyes, as if debating whether they were worthy to continue living or not. "Thank you for bringing her to us," Altena said sweetly to the man, though inside her mind was seething with cruel comments to shoot at him like a barrage of arrows.
But she refrained from doing so, and the man left in something of a hurry. "Come, dear one," the blonde young woman said kindly as she led Chloe further into the Manor. "Let me show you around," she grasped the red-headed girl's hand and led her down the hallway but her purple eyes met Kirika's dark, mysterious ones. Without a word between them, the younger girl nodded and stole out of the magnificent building, pulling a sword from a crest on the wall as she left.
It didn't take long for her to catch up with the cruel man that so eagerly left his daughter behind. Altena couldn't stand people like that; in fact, she loathed them with a passion that she would never allow anyone to ever see. Before the man knew what was even going on, Kirika ran the sword through his heart and walked away, swinging the blade that now dripped droplets of fresh red blood onto the ground. Back and forth, making indents in the ground as it got closer to the bottom of its pendulum, for the sword was much too long for the little girl to use, or so most people would think.
She smiled grimly as she handed the sword to the first woman she met up with in the Manor before heading out back to the training grounds. But instead of meeting up with Altena, as the dark-haired girl had been hoping, she caught sight of the strange newcomer, Chloe. "Are you Kirika?" she asked quietly.
The five-year-old hadn't been asked a personal question in such a long time, everyone in the Manor already knew her so well. "Yes," was all she replied.
"I'm Chloe," the red-head said, her voice still slightly subdued as if she was afraid of Kirika suddenly yelling at her for reasons unknown. What kind of family had she just come from? "Altena told me that we're almost the same age…do you wanna play?" Before the Japanese girl could say anything, Chloe had grabbed her hand and was dragging her through the garden, while a soft relieved laughter floated behind her through the breeze.
Meanwhile, Altena watched the girls through her window while her fingers caressed the dead leaves of a dying plant. She smiled and cleanly snapped the thin plant in half while two similar thin trees sat in tiny pots on her desk. Three saplings, only two of them were required, the third was disposable…