Ohayo minna-san! This Tenshi Cosmos! I promise I will update my other fic
as soon as I get reviews. I want ten reviewes before I post up the next
chapter. It's really long so I wanna make sure you want to read it. This is
a fic about how Serena ( I like Usa better but this is an AU in Chicago so
Sere works better) picks her life back up after being raped by Darien only
this is with a twist. This is based on the book by Judith Michael called
Sleeping Beauty (has nothing to do with the fairy tale.)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. *looks in pocket* scratch that. I own *counts* fifty cents.
" ______ " speaking
' ______ ' thinking
Hell: My Life
Serena stepped from the limousine and stood beside it, gazing at the massive, carved doors of the chapel, willing herself to go inside. The driver drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and she knew he was wondering what she was waiting for, after an hour of sitting in the backseat while he fought the expressway traffic to get from the airport to Lake Forest by ten o'clock. She was late, but still she stood there, staring at the cold, Gothic stone of the chapel, grayerand colder beneath dark clouds that hung over the town. Chauffers in other limos parked along the length of the block looked up from their newspapers to watch her. 'All right, I'm going' she snapped silently at them, and walked to the front steps. They seemed to stretch in front of her, rising to the heavy double doors with large brass rings for handles. 'I have to do this.' she thought, 'I have to do this. For Apollon.' (Apollon is what Apollo's name sounds like in Greek)
She pulled on one of the brass rings and the door opened noislessly. She walked into the anteroom and an usher opened an inner door and stood aside for her. The chapel was full; all the seats were taken and people stood along the side aisles and in the back. A large man with a briefcase made room for Serena and she slipped in beside him. Someone was speaking, but she barley heared him. She stood still and looked at the backs of the Thompsons, all the generations of Thompsons, rows and rows of Thompsons, and their friends, and buissness associates and even a few of their enemies, and beyond them, at the front of the chapel, the coffin of Apollon Thompson, dead at the age of ninty-one.
The room rustled and swayed like a wheat field under a prairy windas people bent right and left to whisper to their neighbors and to listen to speakers reminisce about Apollon. They all knew eachother; many of them had grown up together, gone to the same privat schools together, and now they were bankers, owners of industries, etc. They were the warp and woof [1] of Chicago society, and Apollon Thompson had been one of them, and they had tolerated his eccentracies (A.N. eccentracies = weirdness), even his running off to the mountains of Colorodo, because, after all, he had made so very much money.
Quietly Serena moved to the side aisle and made her way unobtrusivley toward the front, to look at the faces. Most of them were strange to her. But in the first two rows was the Thompson family, and as she looked at each profile, each one was so familiar she named them all in an instant. It was astonishing to her. 'But why would they change?' she thought. I was the one who ran away. They stayed where they were; comfortable, smug, the same. For so many years.
" He was a great builder," said Harrison Osaka, president of Chicago's largest bank, " a creator of houses -- of whole towns, in fact that won him many awards and brought prestige to all of us. And he went west, as restless men have always done in American history, and discovered Krystallia [2], in the mountains of Colorado, and made it a world famous resort. (A.N. I've actually been to Colorado and it seriously looks like paradise there.) He was a man who knew what he wanted and knew how to achieve it. That was his greatness."
Kennith Thompson stopped listening. (A.N. I Americanized Kenji) 'It wasn't his greatness,' he thought, 'for his father to turn his back on his family and spend about the last ten years of his life concentrating on a private paradise he'd built from the ruins of a little mountain ghost town. Turned his back on Thompson Development, too, the company he'd built; behaved as if it could rot in hell, and Kennith-trying to run the company, trying to run the family-could rot in hell too, for all his father gave a damn. That wasn't a greatness it was an obsession.
"I visited him in Krystallia," Harrison went on. "He was building there, too, always building, molding the town into the shape of his dream. Sometimes he was impatient with how slowly things went, or frustrated because he knew he wouldn't live to finish it. But he never got discouraged or angry; he wasn't the type to let his anger corride his energy."
Amy Jax shifted in her seat. 'Apollon had been angry at her when she insisted on marrying Greg. more than angry; her gentle father had been furious. Because he wasn't at all gentle when he thought his children were being stupid; he roard at truly volcanic levels. He'd roared at Amy for not listening to him, for going ahead with her wedding to Greg Jax, who, he kept telling her, was sly and conniving, and far more interested in Amy's money than in her.' Amy folded her hands neqatly in her lap with a brief glance at Greg, sitting smooth-faced beside her. And of course her father had been absolutly right.
" He was a good friend," said Harrison. " He'll be sorley missed for so many things. His wisdom, his----"
'I miss him already,' thought Rei Thompson Grant. I needed him, proboble more than most daghters need their fathers. He listened to me and never scolded when I got another divorce. He believed in love and faithfulness-he never remarried after mother died; I don't think he even went outwith anyone-But he was so sweet to me; he knew I wanted to be good, he knew i kept trying to be good. She shook her head sadly. I'm almost 49 , and there's so much I don't know about life. She looked sideways at her brother, Duo, who met her eyes and put a comforting hand on her arm. Rei smiled at him through her tears. He wasn't as good as her father, but he was better than nothing. Everybody needs a family, she thought, just to listen and to be kind.
"---- and most of all," Harrison said, "his affectoin for friends and family alike---"
Ken's granddaughter Trinity, six years old, saw Ken's face tighten even more. "Don't be sad, Grandpa," she whispered. "It'll be alright." She scanned the crowd, looking for something wiht which to distract him. " Who's that pretty lady?" she asked suddenly. "Is she a relative?"
Ken followed her gaze, turning his head to look at the mourners standing along the side wall. He knew none of them, and he wondered again at all theses strangers: how little he had known of his father's life.
"Isn't she beautiful?" Trinity whispered. "She looks nice, too."
His gaze flickeredover them again, and then he saw Serena, partly hidden behind someone else. he frowned, briefly puzzled. He peered at her, and then, suddenly, he was halfway out of his seat, poised as if to lunge toward the side of the chapel. He heared a rustling in the crowd behind him; from the corner of his eye he saw Harrison Osaka pause his eulogy(statement about a dead person) and look at him in surprise.
Confusion spread across Ken's face. He hesitated, knees bent, and then, slowly, sat down, staring strait ahead.
"So what isn she?" Trinity whispered impatiently. "A relative?"
Ken closed his eyes briefly, as if in pain. "Yes," he said.
"And he was a teacher," Harrison went on. "He taught new ways of thinking."
He didn't teach me anything Zechs Merquise thought. Only that it's a stupid half assed thing to marry into a family and a company at the same time. Shifting he knocked against Noin's arm (I know her name is Lucrizia, But I just like Noin better.) The seats weretoo close here; why dideverybody have to be crammed against everybody else? It was like marrying into the Thompsons: always hemmed in, pressured, squeezed, stomped on. Asking Noin to marry him was like asking a whale to swallow him up. Like asking him to dissapear.
Noin Merquise moved her arm from her husband's touch. There were too many Thompsans here; she'd known it would annoy him. But what could she do? This was a funeral, not a cocktail partywith a few handpicked guests. Zechs knew that; he ought to behave himself. But he'd never managedto control his temper when he felt they were surrounding him as if he was the last survivor facing an army of occupation. It must be awful for him to go to work each day, she thought.
Down the row she saw Uncle Ken shift restlessly, crossing and recrosing his legs, and she wondered if he was feeling sick or just had to go to the bathroom. He wasn't too uncomfortable to be looking at someone, she saw; he kept on turning his haed to look at the side aisle. She tried to followhis gaze, but saw no one she recognized. A group of men casually dressed, probably from Krystallia, a few corporate types, a few women who looked like secretaries, a strikingly beautikul woman in a severe dak suit, standing partly behind one of the men. No one she knew. Noin shrugged and faced the front again, putting a cautionary hand on Rina (not Rini, this is just a girl), who was beginning to squirm. And why shouldn't she squirm? Funerals were no place for a six year old. But Ken had insisted they all come. As if to convince himself that they were one happy family.
Mina Maxwell, sitting on the other side of her daughter, Trinity, saw her father and her cousin Noin turn to look up the side aisle. She looked, too. She studied the people standing along the wall; they stood two and tree deep, and she tried to make out the faces in the dim light. She stared for a long moment. And then she whispered, "Serena?"
"I don't mean to sound too solemn about Ethan," said Harrison, gathering up his notes. "We had some rousing times together. But what I'll miss the most is his affection, the way he cared about people---"
Others saw the family looking to the side aisle, and the swaying and rustling grew, with a rising hiss of whispers.
"Who are they looking at?"
"Got me"
"Who's that?"
"----and gave them his attention and his energy..." Harrison looked toward the side of the chapel, then, seeing nothing untoward, he looked sternly at his audience and raised his voice. "And his help. He was always my friend. To many of us, he was the best friend we ever had. He leaves an emptiness in our lives that no one can fill. That's what we're here to acknowledge as we say, for the last time, farewell."
There was a brief silence. Harrison picked up his noted and returned to his seat. The minister came to the podium to close the service. And the whispers grew louder.
"I don't know who she is. She look familiar to you?"
"You know, she does. Something about her... I've seen her; I'd bet on it."
"She looks a little bit like Mina, wouldn't you say, but........sleeker [2]. You know, like someone took Mina and glammed her up."
"Um, could be. She looks a lot harder though."
"Right, but I bet she's a Thompson. Some branch of the family anyway
"Quatre," Mina said to her husband, her hand clutching his arm. "I think Serena is here."
"Where?" Quatre asked, turning. "Would she show up, do you think, after all these years?"
Neighbors from Lake Forest craned to look. "I'll be damned. You know who that could be? The oplder sister.........what was her name? serena."
"Whose older sister?"
"Mina's. But I don't know, she doesn't really look like Mina; there's just something.........."
"What happened to her?"
"She ran off about fifteen years ago."
"Ran off?"
"Well, they said she went to a boarding school, but she never came back, so....... Anyway, that's what people were saying: she ran off."
"So she'd be Ken's daughter, Apollon's granddaughter."
"If it's really her."
"Why would she run off?"
"Who knows? You know what kids were like in the sixties........sez drugs, bombs, rtevolution. Whatever."
"Friends," said the minister, "the family has asked me to make a few announcements. Interment [3] will be at Memorial Park Cemetary. The family will be at home........"
At the end of the front row, Relena Thompsan put her hand on her father's arm. "Everybody's looking at that woman."
Darien, who had been readinig, looked up. "What woman?"
Relena iunclined her head and Treize turned. His eyes met Serena's. "For Christ's sake," he said softly. Serena was the one who looked away.
Mina stood and moved past Quatre and their son, Eros, to the side aisle. She walked up it her stride getting more determined with each step. By the time she reached Serena, her hands were outstreched. "You are Serena, aren't you? I feel that you're Serena. Wouldn't a sister know?"
Their hands met and held. "Hello, Mina," Serena said softly.
Senator Darien Thompson watched them embrace. After a moment, he hung an arm over the back of his seat and beckoned to his nephew, Treize Jax, seated just behind him. "That woman," he said when Treize looked forward.
"The one everybody's looking at? You know her?"
"Get rid of her," Darien said without answering the question. "Find out what she wants, give it to her if it isn't a problem, and get rid of her. And see that she doesn't come back."
I finally done!!!!!!!!!!!! * jumps up and down. So the faster you review the faster the next chappie comes out!
~Tenshi Cosmos~
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. *looks in pocket* scratch that. I own *counts* fifty cents.
" ______ " speaking
' ______ ' thinking
Hell: My Life
Serena stepped from the limousine and stood beside it, gazing at the massive, carved doors of the chapel, willing herself to go inside. The driver drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and she knew he was wondering what she was waiting for, after an hour of sitting in the backseat while he fought the expressway traffic to get from the airport to Lake Forest by ten o'clock. She was late, but still she stood there, staring at the cold, Gothic stone of the chapel, grayerand colder beneath dark clouds that hung over the town. Chauffers in other limos parked along the length of the block looked up from their newspapers to watch her. 'All right, I'm going' she snapped silently at them, and walked to the front steps. They seemed to stretch in front of her, rising to the heavy double doors with large brass rings for handles. 'I have to do this.' she thought, 'I have to do this. For Apollon.' (Apollon is what Apollo's name sounds like in Greek)
She pulled on one of the brass rings and the door opened noislessly. She walked into the anteroom and an usher opened an inner door and stood aside for her. The chapel was full; all the seats were taken and people stood along the side aisles and in the back. A large man with a briefcase made room for Serena and she slipped in beside him. Someone was speaking, but she barley heared him. She stood still and looked at the backs of the Thompsons, all the generations of Thompsons, rows and rows of Thompsons, and their friends, and buissness associates and even a few of their enemies, and beyond them, at the front of the chapel, the coffin of Apollon Thompson, dead at the age of ninty-one.
The room rustled and swayed like a wheat field under a prairy windas people bent right and left to whisper to their neighbors and to listen to speakers reminisce about Apollon. They all knew eachother; many of them had grown up together, gone to the same privat schools together, and now they were bankers, owners of industries, etc. They were the warp and woof [1] of Chicago society, and Apollon Thompson had been one of them, and they had tolerated his eccentracies (A.N. eccentracies = weirdness), even his running off to the mountains of Colorodo, because, after all, he had made so very much money.
Quietly Serena moved to the side aisle and made her way unobtrusivley toward the front, to look at the faces. Most of them were strange to her. But in the first two rows was the Thompson family, and as she looked at each profile, each one was so familiar she named them all in an instant. It was astonishing to her. 'But why would they change?' she thought. I was the one who ran away. They stayed where they were; comfortable, smug, the same. For so many years.
" He was a great builder," said Harrison Osaka, president of Chicago's largest bank, " a creator of houses -- of whole towns, in fact that won him many awards and brought prestige to all of us. And he went west, as restless men have always done in American history, and discovered Krystallia [2], in the mountains of Colorado, and made it a world famous resort. (A.N. I've actually been to Colorado and it seriously looks like paradise there.) He was a man who knew what he wanted and knew how to achieve it. That was his greatness."
Kennith Thompson stopped listening. (A.N. I Americanized Kenji) 'It wasn't his greatness,' he thought, 'for his father to turn his back on his family and spend about the last ten years of his life concentrating on a private paradise he'd built from the ruins of a little mountain ghost town. Turned his back on Thompson Development, too, the company he'd built; behaved as if it could rot in hell, and Kennith-trying to run the company, trying to run the family-could rot in hell too, for all his father gave a damn. That wasn't a greatness it was an obsession.
"I visited him in Krystallia," Harrison went on. "He was building there, too, always building, molding the town into the shape of his dream. Sometimes he was impatient with how slowly things went, or frustrated because he knew he wouldn't live to finish it. But he never got discouraged or angry; he wasn't the type to let his anger corride his energy."
Amy Jax shifted in her seat. 'Apollon had been angry at her when she insisted on marrying Greg. more than angry; her gentle father had been furious. Because he wasn't at all gentle when he thought his children were being stupid; he roard at truly volcanic levels. He'd roared at Amy for not listening to him, for going ahead with her wedding to Greg Jax, who, he kept telling her, was sly and conniving, and far more interested in Amy's money than in her.' Amy folded her hands neqatly in her lap with a brief glance at Greg, sitting smooth-faced beside her. And of course her father had been absolutly right.
" He was a good friend," said Harrison. " He'll be sorley missed for so many things. His wisdom, his----"
'I miss him already,' thought Rei Thompson Grant. I needed him, proboble more than most daghters need their fathers. He listened to me and never scolded when I got another divorce. He believed in love and faithfulness-he never remarried after mother died; I don't think he even went outwith anyone-But he was so sweet to me; he knew I wanted to be good, he knew i kept trying to be good. She shook her head sadly. I'm almost 49 , and there's so much I don't know about life. She looked sideways at her brother, Duo, who met her eyes and put a comforting hand on her arm. Rei smiled at him through her tears. He wasn't as good as her father, but he was better than nothing. Everybody needs a family, she thought, just to listen and to be kind.
"---- and most of all," Harrison said, "his affectoin for friends and family alike---"
Ken's granddaughter Trinity, six years old, saw Ken's face tighten even more. "Don't be sad, Grandpa," she whispered. "It'll be alright." She scanned the crowd, looking for something wiht which to distract him. " Who's that pretty lady?" she asked suddenly. "Is she a relative?"
Ken followed her gaze, turning his head to look at the mourners standing along the side wall. He knew none of them, and he wondered again at all theses strangers: how little he had known of his father's life.
"Isn't she beautiful?" Trinity whispered. "She looks nice, too."
His gaze flickeredover them again, and then he saw Serena, partly hidden behind someone else. he frowned, briefly puzzled. He peered at her, and then, suddenly, he was halfway out of his seat, poised as if to lunge toward the side of the chapel. He heared a rustling in the crowd behind him; from the corner of his eye he saw Harrison Osaka pause his eulogy(statement about a dead person) and look at him in surprise.
Confusion spread across Ken's face. He hesitated, knees bent, and then, slowly, sat down, staring strait ahead.
"So what isn she?" Trinity whispered impatiently. "A relative?"
Ken closed his eyes briefly, as if in pain. "Yes," he said.
"And he was a teacher," Harrison went on. "He taught new ways of thinking."
He didn't teach me anything Zechs Merquise thought. Only that it's a stupid half assed thing to marry into a family and a company at the same time. Shifting he knocked against Noin's arm (I know her name is Lucrizia, But I just like Noin better.) The seats weretoo close here; why dideverybody have to be crammed against everybody else? It was like marrying into the Thompsons: always hemmed in, pressured, squeezed, stomped on. Asking Noin to marry him was like asking a whale to swallow him up. Like asking him to dissapear.
Noin Merquise moved her arm from her husband's touch. There were too many Thompsans here; she'd known it would annoy him. But what could she do? This was a funeral, not a cocktail partywith a few handpicked guests. Zechs knew that; he ought to behave himself. But he'd never managedto control his temper when he felt they were surrounding him as if he was the last survivor facing an army of occupation. It must be awful for him to go to work each day, she thought.
Down the row she saw Uncle Ken shift restlessly, crossing and recrosing his legs, and she wondered if he was feeling sick or just had to go to the bathroom. He wasn't too uncomfortable to be looking at someone, she saw; he kept on turning his haed to look at the side aisle. She tried to followhis gaze, but saw no one she recognized. A group of men casually dressed, probably from Krystallia, a few corporate types, a few women who looked like secretaries, a strikingly beautikul woman in a severe dak suit, standing partly behind one of the men. No one she knew. Noin shrugged and faced the front again, putting a cautionary hand on Rina (not Rini, this is just a girl), who was beginning to squirm. And why shouldn't she squirm? Funerals were no place for a six year old. But Ken had insisted they all come. As if to convince himself that they were one happy family.
Mina Maxwell, sitting on the other side of her daughter, Trinity, saw her father and her cousin Noin turn to look up the side aisle. She looked, too. She studied the people standing along the wall; they stood two and tree deep, and she tried to make out the faces in the dim light. She stared for a long moment. And then she whispered, "Serena?"
"I don't mean to sound too solemn about Ethan," said Harrison, gathering up his notes. "We had some rousing times together. But what I'll miss the most is his affection, the way he cared about people---"
Others saw the family looking to the side aisle, and the swaying and rustling grew, with a rising hiss of whispers.
"Who are they looking at?"
"Got me"
"Who's that?"
"----and gave them his attention and his energy..." Harrison looked toward the side of the chapel, then, seeing nothing untoward, he looked sternly at his audience and raised his voice. "And his help. He was always my friend. To many of us, he was the best friend we ever had. He leaves an emptiness in our lives that no one can fill. That's what we're here to acknowledge as we say, for the last time, farewell."
There was a brief silence. Harrison picked up his noted and returned to his seat. The minister came to the podium to close the service. And the whispers grew louder.
"I don't know who she is. She look familiar to you?"
"You know, she does. Something about her... I've seen her; I'd bet on it."
"She looks a little bit like Mina, wouldn't you say, but........sleeker [2]. You know, like someone took Mina and glammed her up."
"Um, could be. She looks a lot harder though."
"Right, but I bet she's a Thompson. Some branch of the family anyway
"Quatre," Mina said to her husband, her hand clutching his arm. "I think Serena is here."
"Where?" Quatre asked, turning. "Would she show up, do you think, after all these years?"
Neighbors from Lake Forest craned to look. "I'll be damned. You know who that could be? The oplder sister.........what was her name? serena."
"Whose older sister?"
"Mina's. But I don't know, she doesn't really look like Mina; there's just something.........."
"What happened to her?"
"She ran off about fifteen years ago."
"Ran off?"
"Well, they said she went to a boarding school, but she never came back, so....... Anyway, that's what people were saying: she ran off."
"So she'd be Ken's daughter, Apollon's granddaughter."
"If it's really her."
"Why would she run off?"
"Who knows? You know what kids were like in the sixties........sez drugs, bombs, rtevolution. Whatever."
"Friends," said the minister, "the family has asked me to make a few announcements. Interment [3] will be at Memorial Park Cemetary. The family will be at home........"
At the end of the front row, Relena Thompsan put her hand on her father's arm. "Everybody's looking at that woman."
Darien, who had been readinig, looked up. "What woman?"
Relena iunclined her head and Treize turned. His eyes met Serena's. "For Christ's sake," he said softly. Serena was the one who looked away.
Mina stood and moved past Quatre and their son, Eros, to the side aisle. She walked up it her stride getting more determined with each step. By the time she reached Serena, her hands were outstreched. "You are Serena, aren't you? I feel that you're Serena. Wouldn't a sister know?"
Their hands met and held. "Hello, Mina," Serena said softly.
Senator Darien Thompson watched them embrace. After a moment, he hung an arm over the back of his seat and beckoned to his nephew, Treize Jax, seated just behind him. "That woman," he said when Treize looked forward.
"The one everybody's looking at? You know her?"
"Get rid of her," Darien said without answering the question. "Find out what she wants, give it to her if it isn't a problem, and get rid of her. And see that she doesn't come back."
I finally done!!!!!!!!!!!! * jumps up and down. So the faster you review the faster the next chappie comes out!
~Tenshi Cosmos~