Falling
It is a time he will never quite understand, her time in the book. For though he has read her story, even been a minor character in the book himself, there is always that missing connection, the knowledge that he has visited the Universe of the Four Gods only mentally but never, physically been there. It is the Distance between them, and sometimes he envies Miaka and Taka for their shared memories of this most crucial time in history.
As they grow older, it grows less crucial, and they make their own history for themselves. Yui graduates, sails rapidly up the chain of command in the business world like one possessed, and it is all he, Tetsuya, can do to stay abridge of her accomplishments.
They eat out mostly, though occasionally Tetsuya tries to cook. It is always a poor effort, but she eats his meal and laughs. She is the most beautiful woman in the world when she laughs, and he wishes he could make her laugh more often.
They go to the art museum one day after dining at an Italian restaurant, and they get separated around Picasso and the Cubists. When Yui finds Tetsuya, he is in the Ancient China section staring at a painting of a palace – tangled lines and colors that seem to spring at him from the rice paper.
"Tetsuya?" she says, gently but firmly.
"What was art like, in the other world?" he says, and she lets go of his arm for a moment because they never talk about this; it is the reason the Distance remains the Distance. "Was it like this?" he says, stepping toward the scroll, not touching the faded brown cloth because he is responsible and the museum curators have eyes like hawks, and the last thing he needs right now is humiliation or reprimand. "I just want to know," he says. "I want to picture it."
"It was newer than this," says Yui, after a moment. She touches his arm again. "Everything was very regal and fine."
He nods, and she tugs his arm, not violently but not softly either. "I want to see the Impressionists," she murmurs. "There's nothing really to see here, you know."
He does not believe her, but he lets her pull him out anyway, because the Distance is there still and he is not going to breach it with artwork – surely not artwork of a palace that looks just like the Emperor's house in Kutou.
-v-
She stirs her coffee with a counterclockwise twirl; he stirs his clockwise. He has breached the subject of expanding their holdings to a quiet country house where they can go on weekends, when the work becomes too much. They can afford it (he's done the math, but he knows she will check to be sure).
She seems surprised, as though it is something she has not seriously considered, though he has discussed it with her before.
"Do you love living here so much?" he says, a little sadly.
"That's not it at all," she says. "Though I've been here my whole life, I actually don't –"
She pauses, collecting her thoughts.
"Someone once told me," she says, "that my entry into the Shijintenchisho was precipitated by want. That I only entered the Shijintenchisho because I despised the world I lived in and wished to run away."
He knows this of course; he was the one holding the book as Nakago accused Yui and Miaka of wishing to make a world elsewhere; but still he listens, still he watches, still he hears.
"It seemed ridiculous at the time," Yui says. "Because back then I wanted nothing more right then than to leave the Shijintenchisho behind me. My second wish was to return to this world – you know that, of course. My time in the Shijintenchisho didn't make it a haven, but a burden –"
She watches him sadly, and he takes her hand in his, because it's the only thing he knows how to do. At another table, a man gestures angrily, driving the waitresses into a flurry of movement. He has spilled something and believes it is the wash-woman's fault. Tetsuya wishes he had picked a quieter restaurant. Yui does not notice; she leans closer. Though her hand on his is cool, Tetsuya can feel her pulse through the skin which separates her blood from his. Its steady beat reassures him. The realization strikes him that he has not touched her hand like this in a long time, weeks perhaps. He leans closer, perhaps to prolong the moment, perhaps to drown out the shouting behind them by absorbing Yui with his eyes.
"There are times," Yui whispers, "when I hate this world too. All work and work and work, people everywhere, no space. I don't quite know how we live every day without going mad with so many people."
Even if he cannot understand the book, he can understand this. He knows how it feels to be on a subway, the crush of bodies pressing in, stifling one of energy and breath, the sense of being caged in an underground pocket. He has never liked subway cars, not since his mother died in a tunnel collapse when he was nine.
"But we can't live alone," he says. The words are meant to be gentle, but they come out too quickly, sound too rote and robotic and routine, for they are words he has reminded himself of as well, to the extent that they have become almost a litany. Tetsuya realizes that he has made a mistake. Once again, the Distance seems to stir, rumbling to life with a suddenness that is frightening. Yui's face is closed off, and Tetsuya tries to correct his error, but it is too late to suck the words back toward his mouth. They linger like coal dust on the air between them, swirling in painful dark eddies, drifting down to be thrown up again by the waitresses scurrying back and forth in a line past their table.
-v-
There are many things that his wife does not think is a good idea. The words slip from her mouth like soft needles – a quiet "I don't think it's a good idea now, I've got work at seven" regarding a trip to the theater, or "No, I don't think so, it's not prudent" over investing in stocks. He tries not to argue, and he only grimaces when she can't see it, in the dark of their bedroom after the lights are out, or at work the next day when Google shares rise ten points.
It is building now, her cool rebuke, this soft questioning of his sanity that causes him to inwardly bristle but outwardly shrug. Only this time he does not feel like shrugging, because this is something he has wished for for half of his life, and he will be damned if he will let her put a stop to his foolishness. "I don't think this is a good idea," Yui says, and Tetsuya looks at the horse, a piebald mare with a fair brown mane and teeth like small nutcrackers. It nudges him, and he nudges it back, a kind of rapping of his fist against its flank. He does not really know if this is how you are supposed to show camaraderie with a horse, but he thinks that it cannot be all that much different from showing camaraderie with the guys at work, except for the fact that this horse is female and not wearing a suit and has teeth that could sever a finger.
"Well," he says.
They are here because he has always wanted to ride horses, even before his young ninja phase, and the neighbors are friendly and have a my-horses-are-yours kind of openness that most city folk lack.
"Tetsuya," says Yui. Her voice is patient – too much so, he thinks. "I've ridden before, but you haven't."
She has ridden before in Kutou, and he thinks it is less than sporting of her to rub it in. For the first time since he met her, he does not grimace inwardly, but raises his chin, as though to toss the fatal I-don't-think-this-is-a-good-idea back toward her across the stable. She blinks, stares at the reins that are still in his hands; her lips part, and her teeth are white, as though she has just brushed them.
"I was a character in the book myself," he says, tentatively. She huffs a little and lets out a faint hum that is a cross between a "Hmph!" and a "Hmm." He knows better than to inquire.
-v-
Yui thinks this is madness.
They are here because Tetsuya has never ridden before, and that is something you are supposed to do in the country. Their new neighbors have a farm. Yui has never liked horses, has always hated the way they smell, the sharp odorous tang of manure, but they have new neighbors to please, and Tetsuya had eyes that were like a small puppy when he set eyes on the farm. He believes he is going to leap astride a horse and instantly be transformed into her hero in shining armor. He is mistaken, because he hasn't even managed to saddle the animal properly, and he is going to end up in the hospital if things keep going the way they are, and then Yui is going to have to listen to grim prognoses from the doctors, and the medical bills are going to make everything very exhausting.
Plus, he has forgotten that shining-armor knights are typically adorned with, well, some kind of armor, along with a sword, and a deep confidence born of years' experience in battle, all of which Tetsuya lacks. He would look foolish in armor in modern Japan, and she is glad that he lacks a weapon, because he would probably manage to stab himself on it, but she cannot help but dress him up like a hero in her mind and find him lacking.
She does not know what possessed the neighbors to offer them their horses. She thinks it might have been hope that she and Tetsuya would meet an early death so that the neighbors could buy their next-door home for cheap. No, that is unkind, she is sure they are nice people. "Tetsuya," she barks.
"Huh?" he says, and she lets her teeth clench.
"You use the stirrups to push yourself over the top of the horse," she says, demonstrating. She is surprised that mounting a horse still comes to her so fluidly. It took Suiboshi a few days to teach her, and she thought she would never learn then. It is galling, the memories that this is evoking, and she tries to shut them out, but they seem to want to pour back in regardless. She is riding a horse, dear god, not witnessing her seishi reincarnated, and yet the breath is coming faster in her throat and her heart is pounding.
He scrambles, and somehow he is astride the horse, though clumsily, and she lets out a breath that she definitely was not holding. "Please try not to kill yourself," she says primly.
"Of course," he says, and he smiles, just for a second. She is a little taken aback – not really dazzled, because his smiles ceased to do that years ago, but she has not seen him smile in quite a long time.
"Watch out!" she says, but he sees the low-hanging stable beam and ducks it in time, in a move that is almost graceful, almost worthy of one of her seishi. He ruins the effect by shaking his fist at it as though it is an insidious monster in a video-game.
"It is not alive," she says, a little sharply. She uses the tone of voice you would use when speaking to a grown man who is behaving like he is four, and Tetsuya feels it.
"Am I embarrassing you, or something?"
He rarely speaks so frankly, yet something compels him to pose her this question, shot off from beneath the impenetrable iridescence of his shiny new shades. His head tilts a little to hear Yui's response; she is suddenly silent, unsure how to answer the question without sounding petty. Normal circumstances would prompt her to say "No!" and soothe his wounded pride, and that would be that and he would be fine again. It is just, here in the mountains, where everything seems suddenly almost magic, she cannot quite stand the way Tetsuya sits lopsidedly on his horse with his hands too loosely on the reins, the way he wears dark-tinted sunglasses instead of a helmet or visor, the way he is so frighteningly frightfully modern and ungraceful and commonplace. She has touched unattainable beauty once, and now it is once more unattainable, and this is her world, and she is once more imperfect as the people around her. She does not think all of this in the moment of Tetsuya's question, of course, but she feels it, somewhere, deep inside her.
It was a terrible idea to come here, and she thinks she should never have agreed to leaving the city, even for a weekend. She realizes that Tetsuya has removed the shades, is looking at her, hopefully, or a little sadly, and that a minute has passed, and his hair is a little bedraggled, but catching the sunlight, his skin pale because he never sees the light of day in his office.
"Of course not," she says briskly.
"Good," he says, and he says it with relief, and she know he does not quite trust her but does not want to not trust her either, for fear of what that would bring. She is glad of it. "I think," he says, "we should do a few circles around the farmyard and call it quits. If that sits well with you, Your Eminence?"
It is a joking voice – he means only to tease her – but she starts at the address. It is not anger that causes her to jump, but surprise – shock at hearing the familiar title come from his mouth as though he is reading her thoughts, as though he knows that all through this ride she has been measuring him up to her seishi and finding him lacking. Guilt lends itself to her surprise, guilt and longing and some other emotion she cannot quite name which might be love, and she loses her balance on top of her mount, and Tetsuya's eyes go wide. He tries to push her back on, a hand on her back that is more of a fright to her own horse than a help to her stability. His own mare bolts then, made skittish by his leaning, and Tetsuya is the one who overbalances, and as he falls, he grabs on to Yui, and she falls, inevitably; it is like a chain falling from the roof of a building, he thinks dizzily, once half of it is over the edge, there is nothing to stop the rest from tumbling down. He does not know how he has time to think this, for his breath explodes in a rush of air and Yui lands on top of him, and her hair is in his mouth, and the mare is neighing like someone just kicked it in the ribs. He would be moaning if he had enough air. And he sucks in air, and stares at the woman on top of him. At first he thinks that she is terribly hurt, for she is shaking uncontrollably.
And then he sees that she is laughing, silent, shaking laughter that he has never seen before, and he thinks she is crazy because of it, and he says her name, but she continues to laugh. She laughs at the irony that her wrist is sprained although Tetsuya is fine – laughs because she has forgotten how dull the world is without falling – laughs at the memory of slamming from the sky out of a dragon's stomach, crash-landing naked in a manner much like this one. And, as she hangs on to the arm of the person who has always stopped her fall before she could hit the ground too hard, she thinks that even a minor character in the book just might make an acceptable knight in shining armor, someday.
A/N: This was inspired by a conversation I had with someone about Tetsuya a little while ago, in which I sort of realized how short-shafted a character he was. I wanted to flesh out his relationship with Yui a bit, since I think Yui is one of the more interesting FY characters, but surely somewhat painful to live with. Voila my take on Tetsuya and Yui's relationship. And ohmigod, did I actually write something that's not depressing?
As always, drop me a line if you read this, even if it's simply "This fic is fluffier than a bunny that's eaten a goosefeather pillow" or "Why did you post this crap instead of writing more Protected?" Feedback makes me a happy, happy person.
Disclaimer: Fushigi Yuugi belongs to Yuu Watase and is not, therefore, mine. Nor are her characters.