Disclaimer: Saint Seiya is the property of Masami Kurumada, Toei Productions (anime) and Shueisha.
Till Fate Do Us Part
A light in the city found its way through the blinds and hit Ikki's eyes, inciting him to slowly shift in bed, stretching his legs. He seemed to have been spending an incredible amount of time in his bed lately. The past few weeks had been unusually calm. No enemies, no battles. And besides, this was pleasurable — to feel the warmth of his room in the first hours of the night, the chill of fall retained outside, to stretch and turn lazily between the sheets, to reach out for her waist and bury his face in her hair.
Li was sleeping beside him. He still could not believe anyone could sleep as much as she did. Of course the late hours she worked as a bartender accounted for some of it; but in any case it did not seem natural that she would have as much as ten or eleven hours of sleep every single day. It was something to get used to. There was a lot to get used to.
The chinese woman had been living with him for four weeks now. After giving her life in China proper closure, she had come to meet him in Japan — to where he had found the strength to return, after all — and was now a constant and undemanding companion. He had grown accustomed to falling asleep to the scent of her hair, hearing her voice in the morning, having petty arguments with her, and found himself quite fond of it all. Li was gracious, witty, and high-spirited; she found his irritable ways laughable rather than revolting, and did not seem to be bothered by his constant travels. Yes, she asked too many questions, and the sound of her laughter was annoying sometimes; but she never complained when he failed to answer, and she met his humorous tirades with smiles more often than with laughs.
The good outweighed the bad.
Li understood exactly what sort of arrangement she had agreed to. That morning back in China, when he had asked her in the most oblique possible way to come with him, her first response had been to laugh out loud.
"You're so romantic."
"Look, I'm not asking you to marry me or anything," he had cried, uneasy. "Just quit that stupid job, find another one just as stupid in Japan, and spend your days..."
"...in bed with you?"
He twisted his lips into a mischievous grin. "My thoughts precisely. See? We're soulmates."
She laughed again. There was a moment of silence before he resumed.
"Well, that's my final offer, so I'd appreciate it if you made your informed decision in the next five minutes."
"Oh, stop it. You know I can't resist when you act all thoughtful and adorable."
Ikki laughed. She smiled, but her face soon turned serious.
"I'm not in love with you either, you know."
He stared at her blankly, torn between his wounded vanity and his gratitude for her soundness.
"I was seeing this guy. Woke up one morning and he was gone," she continued, with a raised eyebrow and a bitter half-smile, in a feeble attempt to deride her former self. "I've been told he went up North." She paused to reach for one of the cigarettes she smoked sometimes and put it to her lips. "Never even bothered to call."
"So I'm the rebound?"
She shrugged. "Everyone is. He was the love of my life."
"She's the love of my life too," he sighed.
Li nodded.
"So," he began, "you coming?"
"Of course I'm coming. I have nothing to keep me here."
He smirked. "I suppose that's especially true now that the best sex you've ever had will be gone."
"Restrain your speculation to the realm of possibility, kid."
"Oh, I'm sure my competitors are many more than can count."
"But then again, it's not too hard to find a number higher than you can count."
"Surely not as hard as finding a man you haven't slept with."
"Or as hard as seeing grounds for your cockiness."
"Come to Japan with me and you'll see," he smirked.
"Keep your pants on, sugar. I have some stuff to sort out around here."
"I won't wait."
"And when exactly did I ask you to?" she snapped. "I'll meet you there. Can't be hard to find the grumpiest dude in the Far East."
"Grumpy meets slutty."
"Slutty meets bitchy. Do I get to see her?"
"Who?"
She rolled her eyes. "The rich bitch, of course."
"Why would you wanna see her?"
"Just thought I'd check if the leading lady is as pretty as her stand-in."
And now, here she was, a mess of violet hair dressed in a ratty T-shirt, sleeping longer than he had thought humanly possible. He stroked her hair and traced the way down her spine to the small of her back. Yes, he thought, closing his eyes, the good outweighs the bad.
He did not realize he was falling asleep again until he suddenly woke up. He sat up and looked around the room, now filled with the grayish light that precedes dawn, trying to determine what had awaken him. There seemed to be nothing abnormal in the shadows that populated the walls, nor in the usual buzz of the waking city. Li breathed heavily on the opposite side of the bed, one leg thrown over his.
Then he felt it again. Shun. He could feel his brother's unruffled cosmo in the distance, unconscious and asleep; he could sense it as distinctly as the dark and piercing cosmo that approached it, malevolent, treacherous. Murderous.
He rid himself of Li's body, waking her up in the process, and jumped out of bed.
"Why are you getting up?" she yawned.
"They need me at work."
"Why right now?"
"They've paged me," he shouted from the bathroom while digging into the laundry for his red pants.
"But I haven't heard a pager."
He was headed for the door. "It was on vibracall."
Ikki left just in time to hear her cry, "But you were naked!"
Saori held up her skirt and struggled her tired way up the stairs. She had been on a plane for hours on end, on her way back from Greece, from the Sanctuary, where she had spent three weeks. The time had come to return, for the Foundation must not wait; yet she came home discouraged by the certainty that she had not found what she had been looking for. She had been looking for oblivion, and nevertheless her memories were more vivid than ever.
The girl changed into a nightgown and sat on the edge of the bathtub to brush her long hair. She could still use jet lag and general exhaustion as an excuse for a day or two, perhaps, but it would soon be inevitable, and she might as well not prolong the agony of anticipation. On Monday I will see him, she promised herself. On Monday I will see Seiya.
It would of course be painful. It was always painful — to long, to yearn, to let out silent screams of frustration when no one was looking —, but her own foolishness had made it all incalculably harder. Even now, alone in her own bathroom, she blushed at the memory of her behavior that night. Saori wiped off her make-up with a tissue and bent over the sink to look at herself in the mirror. Her bare face looked younger, much closer to the age on her I.D.. Much less determinate and less sophisticated. This was the self she hid from the world. This was not the head of the Graude Foundation. This was certainly not Athena. This was 13-year-old Saori Kido.
This was the self that had knocked on Seiya's door on a chilly Friday night four weeks ago. He had opened it almost immediately, and urged her to come in, as she did. He did not wait until she was seated to inquire:
"Is anything wrong?"
"No," she answered. "Well, not anything... urgent."
He sat down beside her, his face a mask of concern.
"Something else, then?"
"Seiya..." she started, realizing that she had not thought of what to say.
"Yes?"
"I've come here to..." Why exactly had she come? "To tell you that..."
"Yes?" he bid again, from the very edge of his seat.
"To tell you that I give up," she finally said, relieved to have found the words. Yes, she had given up.
"I don't understand."
How could the saint of Hope understand what it meant to give up?
"I don't want this anymore. I don't... I can't do this."
"Do what, Saori? What don't you want?"
"All of it. The power, the responsibility... this life!" She stood up, agitated. "I want something different. I want... my own life; a life I have chosen to live. A life I wish to live."
"You've been working too hard," he murmured.
"It's not that!" she spat, somewhat irritably. He seemed intimidated.
"I'm sorry, I just don't see... what is it that you want?"
"I want this!" she cried, on the verge of tears, kneeling on the floor before him and taking his face between her hands for a kiss.
It seemed a very long time until he pulled away, long enough for his hand to have found the nape of her neck, and for her face to have grown so used to the closeness of his breath that being severed from it felt like the blow of a very cool breeze. But not as cool as the words that followed.
"Saori, we can't do this."
"Seiya..."
"You're Athena." He sounded determined. "You can't. We can't."
"I give it up," she said, the sound of her voice deranged by a hope that stemmed from obsessive machinations. "I give it all up. We'll run away, you and me. We'll never return."
"We can't do that, Saori!" It was his turn to stand. She sat on the floor, hurt. "I'm a saint of Athena! You are Athena! We're needed, Saori. We're needed here."
"I don't want to be needed!" she yelled.
"Saori, we have no choice."
"No, no, no!" she cried, tears running openly down her face. She felt like a spoiled child kicking and screaming over a toy. "I have a choice! I choose to live! I choose you!"
He sat on his heels to speak to her, pushing her hair away from her face with one hand. She looked at the floor and away from his eyes.
"Saori, you are the reincarnation of Athena. The Earth needs you to protect it, and me to help with it. It's your fate. It's our fate."
She raised her head slowly, coyly, more childish than ever, and he smiled.
"You are the strongest person I know," he had added, standing up and offering his hand to pull her up as well.
They had met again a few days later, when he came to the mansion to see Shun, but Saori felt so humiliated that she could barely speak to him. The next week they met once more, and she strove to look natural, to sound natural, despite her hardly resistible desire to cry. She had not been humiliated by him, but rather had humiliated herself; and to think of his selflessness and sense of duty, in contrast with her own puerile behavior, was almost too much to bear. He had only displayed the qualities that she admired most about him. He had made her love him even more.
So she ran away to Greece, like the coward that she was.
Saori put off the lights and lay on her bed. Her weakness would be concealed in the darkness. She tried to think of work but felt sleep undoing the workings of her tired reason, washing away her thoughts like a tide. Then the image of Seiya came to her mind again, as it always did; and to no one but herself she whispered, "There must be a way."
"There is always a way for my favorite daughter," said the man.
Saori shifted uncomfortably in her cushioned seat. "But I had never been told."
"Of course not," replied Zeus. "It is not to be taken lightly. And it has never been tried."
"But I may try it?"
"At your own risk, if you will."
"And then would I have love?"
"Then you would have love," he confirmed.
"So I will. Tell me what I must do."
"Now, dearest, pay attention. Sit up straight."
Saori woke up sitting in her bed, alarmed. She could sense it very clearly, on the other end of the long hall. It had no light, no heat. It was unlike any cosmo she had ever felt.
And it was in Shun's room.
Hello, my three readers. :) (Well, I actually have four people to thank for very kind reviews. Yay. :)) I hope no one is broken-hearted about Seiya and Saori. :) Or bored with Ikki and Li (am I the only one who thinks she's perfect for him?). :) Anyway, next chapter I'll get Phoenix in the mansion, and then we'll really see some action. See you then (or in reviews...), thanks for reading!