Author's note: This a little fic I wrote as a a homage to the late author of the Zero no Tsukaima novels Noburo Yamaguchi.
Fire… That was the only thing Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière could see around her, that damn crimson blaze that was rapidly reducing to ashes the castle she had sworn to protect; she tried calling from help but it was useless, no one would come, there was no one left to help them.
As the damn thing engulfed the room around them, she looked at her knees to find her most important person lying on top of them, "Saito…" she whispered to no one, he still lived but his consciousness was in another place, then she looked at her hand to see her half-broken wand that barely held itself together in one piece.
That was when she knew there was no hope for them, if the fire didn't kill them then the soldiers that started it would, it was in these circumstances that Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière decided to cast her one last spell.
Memories of Fire.
It was 6:00 am on the Hiraga household, just in time for the main room to be drowned with the annoying sound of a morning alarm. "Saito, wake up!" A woman with pink hair said to her husband, hastily trying to get the arm he had around her away. "Five more minutes…" He muttered on his sleep yet his wife insisted. "No way! I have to get up to make breakfast, plus you promised me you'd cleanup the basement today first thing in the morning. "
He took his arm away as she heard him mutter an "Ok…" before he began to slowly drag himself out of bed and into the bathroom, a luxury she unfortunately didn't have; she quickly stood up and put on some clothes before darting towards the kitchen.
"Good morning mom!", "Good morning…" Her two children walked in just as she was finished with breakfast, "Good morning to you too my dears." She said as she gave each of the twins she had been blessed with a kiss on the cheek, before serving them a traditional Japanese breakfast just the way they liked it.
"Thanks mom!" They said almost in unison as they dug in, she smiled as she watched them eat; the boy named Saito just like his dad, ate with dignified manners that were just like his mother's, while her beautiful little girl Sakura was a lot more like his father in that they both ate as if they were in a race.
"Mom, have you and dad finished the new book yet?" Louise looked at her son and then nodded with a smile "Yep, we stayed up until 2:00am but the latest, greatest and hopefully final version of the last volume is done!" She said with a lot of pride on her voice, it was only natural; after all it was thanks to their work as a novelist that the couple managed to pay the bills and have a little cash to spare, not bad for two people that never finished high school.
"I see congratulations! I can't wait to read it." Her daughter said with a smile on her face. "The last one ended in such a cliffhanger…" Louise chuckled when she heard that. "You could've just asked you know…" And Sakura replied in kind. "But that's no fun."
After this breakfast continued in silence, it was only a few minutes later when Louise spoke "It seems it's going to rain." She said to no one in particular, over the years she had developed the habit of commenting the weather to whoever would listen to her.
"I hope not, I have field training today and I hate to train on the gym when every club on school is there, it's just too cramped." The girl said as she finished her breakfast and then stared at her brother waiting for him to do the same. "I hear you, last time we could barely even practice passing the ball without hitting someone." The boy nodded in agreement as he finished his food; they both said "Thanks for the food Mom, we're leaving!" as they stood up and left towards the entrance "Have a nice day." She answered them.
They had grown so much, it seemed just yesterday they were just babies resting on her arms but now they were on their last year of middle school; time had simply gone by too fast for them. She watched as they put on their shoes and went out the door; she sighed when that happened.
"Well, I better get to work." She went back to the kitchen and had something quick to eat, then washed the dishes and left his husband breakfast on the table with some plastic wrap on it, knowing him he had probably fallen asleep on the washroom again "He never changes." She said and then chuckled to herself.
She quickly went to their room and found no one, taking the opportunity to change into her gym clothes before going out for her morning exercise; one hour of jogging was her routine, sometimes she wondered how come someone so un-athletic as she was on her youth could do something like that, but that was in the past now. She almost never went outside the house, even after all these years she never felt comfortable going outside without her husband… Luckily, the house they lived in used to be a temple and you could easily fit an Olympic track in the yard if you wished, so she never ran out of space.
Still, jogging around the same place could get boring so sometimes she convinced her husband to do it with her, a nearly futile task as he said that the only thing he enjoyed about jogging was watching her wearing tights, yet sometimes with a little nagging he would accept and they would go around the town and enjoy the beautiful scenery, meeting a few of their friends who lived nearby.
"Well, that's it for today." She said as she finished her cooling exercises, wiping the sweat on her forehead with a clean towel and then going towards the kitchen to get something to drink before taking a bath. "What is this?" She found her husband breakfast just as it was this morning, she got a little worried, he was careless about many things but eating was not one of them, so she decided to look around the house for him.
"Saito! Where are you?" He wasn't on their room, or in the bathroom, or in the living room, or in their kids' rooms, not even in the yard, yet just as her nerves were beginning to get the best of her she remembered. "That's right, I told him to clean up the basement…" Of course she never thought he would actually do it, much less on an empty stomach.
The house's basement was a mystery for her, according to her husband it had been built for the last great war this country had seen, which was why the main entrance was hidden on a shed away from the house and why you needed to go down several meters on a flimsy ladder before reaching the room, it also had another entrance that connected to a well on the backyard, which according to her father in-law it was to get fresh water from the well and to sneak provisions and messages on the bucket. They mainly used the thing as a storage place, because while getting things down there wasn't precisely a simple task, they were easy to forget once they were in place.
On the shed she found the entrance wide open, she took a deep breath before looking down the tunnel, it was completely lit up thanks to some light bulbs that were installed by her father in-law before they moved in, so she could feel a little safer as she slowly began to descend into it.
As she carefully went down step by step on the ladder she cursed herself for having the stupid idea of telling her husband to clean this thing, it was pointless, whatever was in there wasn't needed and better left forgotten anyway, so why bother? Plus now that they had some spare time it was a way better idea to spend it together instead.
"Saito, Saito…!" She finally got to the bottom and found his husband had already cleaned most of the room, organized all the boxes in perfect stacks and placed most of the stuff were it should be, everything except for one box that must be really interesting, as her husband was kneeling over it so focused that he didn't even heard her going down the ladder or calling his name.
"Saito!" She said as he grabbed his shoulder; finally acknowledging her presence he jumped. "Louise! You scared me…" She said "Sorry." And then her attention quickly shifted to the box he was trying to hide… "What's in the box?"
"Nothing…" He lied as plainly as the day. "What do you mean nothing? It's not empty so it must have something." She said testing him, he had two choices at this point, either he came clean or he continued with his lie "Nothing important I mean…" And unwisely he choose the second option. "Let me see it then."
She could see him swallowing before he said "I said it was nothing important, see I was just about to seal it back on and put it on its place." But just as he was about to move, his wife noticed an object on the floor. "That's… Saito, that's my wand…"
He could see the face of his wife sadden as she kneeled to pick up the broken stick that was lying on the floor and even more when she moved him out of her way to look at the contents of the box. "This is my uniform, and… Saito don't tell me…" He just nodded at her. "Yes, this the box were I placed all the stuff we had when we last crossed the gate, your wand, your uniform, our capes, whatever stuff we had on our pockets… Everything but our wedding rings is there."
She examined the box for a second before hastily closing it. "You're right; this is nothing important, we should…" Saito could see how she was forcing herself to say those words, and after no more than a sentence he couldn't take it anymore and hugged her from behind. "Louise…" She grabbed his arm as a way to hug him back and they remained like that for a while.
"It'd been a while…" She said letting go of his arms. "Since I thought of Halkeginia…" He let go of her as well and they both stood up to face each other. "I used to dream about it all the time you know, our adventures, our friends, our family, our home… the war." He remembered it a little different, back then she would wake up in the middle of the night screaming, and then she would cry in his arms until her tears wouldn't flow anymore… those weren't dreams, those were nightmares.
"But they stopped, didn't they?" She nodded. "Yes, I think they stopped around the time I got pregnant with the kids… I believe that was when I accepted it." She took a long breath. "I accepted that we would never bathe together in our hot spring back in Des Ornières, that we would never meet any of our friends again, that I would never be able to introduce our kids to my mother… I accepted that we were never going back and that I had to move on."
"Louise…" He tried to speak, yet he continued as if she hadn't listened. "You know Saito, when I first learned that we were going to have twins I thought about naming the girl like my mother, 'Karin', it's a name in this country too and I think is beautiful…" She raised her face and looked at him directly into his eyes. "But I also thought that I didn't want to remember painful things each time I looked at my little girl, so I decided to leave the past behind…"
"So you named her Sakura." She gave him an honest smile for the first time in what it seemed to be an eternity. "Sakura, that's the name of the trees I saw on that day…" But then her face turned sour. "I still remember you know, when we returned from our honeymoon we found ourselves in the middle of a civil war, some nobles weren't happy of the titles you had earned, that a commoner could stand among them, but the cowards couldn't face us directly and waited for us to leave the country to strike."
"When we got back we tried to help… but it was too late, the war raged on and they eventually trapped us inside the castle and set it ablaze… You were unconscious, our friends were gone, and my wand was almost broken… So I made the only thing I could, I casted a world door spell, one that would take us somewhere we could be happy… The next thing I remember was that we were lying on the grass as thousands cherry blossoms flew around us… I thought it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, it even made me forget about the inferno we left behind for a while." She lowered her face again. "It was only later I noticed that last spell broke my wand, and that we could never get back."
"Louise, are you ok?" She took a deep breath as the sadness left her face, replaced with a melancholic smile. "Yes, I'm fine… You know Saito… I was thinking, I'm going to be 35 pretty soon and then…" She cut her words mid-sentence. "Then…?"
"I… We came to this world when I was 17… Saito, I've lived on this world longer that I've lived on my own." He smiled at her. "I'm sorry Louise, if only I could take you there on the next eclipse I would…" She placed her fingers over his lips. "I understand Saito, solar eclipses are not common in Japan and we don't have the money to go chasing them nor can we risk you stealing another plane, plus…" And then paused for a second, gathering her thoughts. "You know, when we first got here I was scared, in Halkeginia I was a noble, and here I was nobody… I had to give up everything, my past, my language, my name… we even had to marry again."
He remembered, at first just preventing Louise from being deported out of the country was a nightmare on its own… Luckily for them as time happened things began to work out on their favor, Louise learned Japanese, they got married again, got a stable job, a house for them to live and finally got the requirements for her to adopt Japanese citizenship, it had been a hard road, but you'd never hear him say it hadn't been worth it.
"But, those times are gone Saito, our kids live here, our friends are here, our house, job and everything else too… This is our home." He hugged her, there was sense on her words but he knew there was something else behind her decision… After all although he hadn't lived there for long, he loved Halkeginia just as much as Japan, but they both knew that the place at the other side of the eclipse was not the one of their memories, the war they left behind took care of that; some would say it was cowardly of them to think like that, but those were their true feelings. "You're right, sorry…" She hugged him back. "Don't apologize."
They stayed like that for a while, just happy to feel each other warmth until they heard the sound of rain falling outside. "We should go now." He said and she just nodded back at him. "You're right." They walked away to the stairs and just when they were about to start climbing Louise stopped.
"What's the matter…?" But she didn't answer, rather she went back to the box that lay on the floor and carefully sealed it with tape that was lying nearby, before placing it together with the rest. "Sorry, now I'm ready." He smiled at her. "Great! Now we must go before the rain get through the hatch and starts flooding this place; after you milady." He said extending his arm and bowing a little.
"Thank you…" But then she realized something and looked at him with suspicion. "Wait a minute; you just want to look at my butt while I climb with my gym clothes don't you!?" He flinched a little. "No of course not… Well it's true I wouldn't mind seeing that but I just wanted to…" He was at a loss for words when she stared at him. "Pervert! Stupid dog! You haven't changed a thing!"
He chuckled a little. "I suppose not, but neither have you, after all behind the loveable housewife and mother, that arrogant, loud and violent girl I fell madly in love with is still there." She blushed a little and looked away with a frown. "Of course! It doesn't matter which world we're in, I'm still Louise Françoise Le Blanc de Hiraga de La Vallière, a noble, a void mage, your master and last but not least your wife!" She said filled with pride and then chuckled before giving her husband a kiss. "…and if you ever forget that again I´ll punish you." They chuckled together again afterwards before climbing the ladder and got back into their home.
"Saito, I think I have an idea for our next novel series." She said as they reached the bathroom; they'd gotten wet from the rain, not to mention the sweat and dust from their exercise and cleaning were still clinging to their bodies, so they both thought sharing a nice warm bath would be great.
"Oh really? Tell me." He said from the bathtub as he was trying his best to pay attention to her words, and not at her undressing right in front of him. "It's a love story…" She took a deep breath. "The story of a perverted but courageous boy that get's summoned to a world of magic by a beautiful noble girl to be her familiar; they don't get along at first, but after several adventures and misunderstandings they eventually fall in love and get married at the end."
She smiled at him as she joined him on the bathtub. "Are you sure you want to write about that Louise?" She answered him with a nod. "Yes, I know it might be sad sometimes… And I might feel uncomfortable with some details… But I want to tell the world the story of our love, the tale of 'The Familiar of Zero'." She raised her eyes to meet his and then they chuckled together just as their lips were getting closer...