Author's Note: From here on out it's going to be in first person. If you guys think I should put it back into third then tell me, but I don't think it reads as well. This one is Gray's p.o.v. right after he met Kristen. Enjoy!
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I plopped down on my bed, furious about the 'meeting' I'd just experienced. I wasn't even a part of it, so why did I even have to be there? My roommate Cliff gave me a curious glance, which I ignored. Cliff was thankfully quiet and reserved, and chances were he'd let me be. I grabbed my UMA hat and shoved it down on my head, pulling it down so that it covered my eyes before crossing my arms, trying to send Cliff the subliminal message not to question me. Apparently, being the great friend he was, he didn't get it.
"Um…" Cliff started. I shot him a glare from underneath the brim of my hat and he stayed silent. He seemed like he didn't want to be beat up and thought that this would be a good time to get ready for bed. I watched his feet as he stood cautiously and went into the bathroom. There was a small click as he locked the door, and I sighed.
I didn't, no couldn't understand how anyone could do this. This was my life, after all, and my father shouldn't have been able to pick who I had to spend the rest of my life with! Who did he think he was, anyway? And then there was Gramps. Didn't he even care? The least he could've done was tell me! After all, my fiancée had known for eight years! Since she was… nine? He mother had said that she was turning seventeen in a few days… I shivered at the thought. Not that I had anything against people with our age gap being married, but from what I could tell she still acted like a child. I was twenty years old, I'd be twenty one that winter, and I really, really didn't want to have to put up with a kid. How could anyone expect me to marry a child?
Let alone fall in love with one?
I literally growled at the thought and pulled my hat down further over my eyes and closed them, my anger increasing as I thought about the entire situation. If people thought I was angst-ridden before, they must really think so now… Well, I guess that's because I was. If there was one thing that Gramps was right about, it was that my fiancée and I were strikingly different, if the way her mother talked about her was any indication… I sighed and leaned back against the headboard, lost in thought.
I must've been laying like that for a while because when I opened my eyes Kai was standing over me waving his hand in my face.
"Earth to Gray, Earth to Gray! Come in, Gray!" he said. I smacked his hand and sat up from my uncomfortable position, and stretched my sore back and neck, coming to the conclusion that I had fallen asleep. "What's up? And don't tell me nothing because something is definitely up and I'm not going to quit bothering you until you tell me." I sighed. Kai could be such a girl sometimes. It kind of scared me.
I pushed my hat back so that I could look at the tan traveler who I was not-so-proud to call my other roommate, and seeing that he was serious, I resigned. I knew Kai was just trying to help, being my friend and all, but did he have to be so annoying about it? I saw Cliff sitting on his bed on the other side of the room, looking at me curiously, and I thought that he'd probably said something to Kai if he knew something was bothering me and I'd been asleep when he came in. I wondered briefly how they didn't know about it yet and decided to put off telling them by asking about it.
"Because we, being part of the rumor mill ourselves, don't get told what's going on around here. And besides," Kai replied. "I've only been in town for a week." He gave me a genuine smile, but I could tell he knew more than he was letting on. After all, he was practically dating Popuri and she was the first to know about it. After me, of course. Cliff still looked as clueless as ever. I sighed again, sadness and frustration resurfacing as I told them about the day my grandfather had told me about my…er… relationship status.
---
"WHAT?!" I yelled at my grandfather, who just watched me in his annoyingly uninterested manner. I scowled, narrowing my eyes in hate and disbelief at him. "What do you mean, I'm already engaged to someone?!"
"Exactly what I said, boy," he replied, still gazing at me distantly. "It really isn't that hard to understand."
"Do you ever think about what I want?" I screamed, fingering the ring I'd finished that day in my pocket, my thoughts focusing on the girl I'd made it for before snapping back to the situation at hand. Who was he to decide who I would be getting married to, anyway?
"Obviously," he said, not even bothering to look at me anymore, but instead focusing on the ore on the counter in front of him. "Otherwise you wouldn't even be here, would you? You'd still be in the city with your parents." I glared at him, not believing for a second that this was really my choice. My dad got everything he wanted, no matter what, and I figured that me being in Mineral Town was due to one of his hidden agendas. He had always been a cruel and mysterious man.
And I hated him.
Not wanting to argue about this with Gramps, I looked down, hiding my eyes under the brim of my hat, and blinked back tears.
"… Why didn't you tell me that I was promised to someone before I… went through all the trouble?" He knew without asking that I was talking about everything I'd gone through with Mary, from saying even a syllable to her to actually asking her to festivals (provided Gramps allowed me to go), and finally making the ring to propose to her with.
"I told you before you ended up engaged to more than one person at once," he said, and I thought I could see a grin tugging on his lips underneath his impossibly large mustache, just as I saw a contemplative gleam in his eyes despite his also impossibly large eyebrows. "And besides, you're thinking of it all wrong. You weren't promised to her, she was promised to you." My expression changed to one of brief shock before contorting in rage at his sexist views.
"Well thanks for keeping me from becoming a polygamist!" I nearly spat the words at him. "Did you ever think that maybe I wouldn't like this girl that you chose for me? That maybe I had somebody else in mind?"
"These plans were made long before you met Mary," he said quietly, looking up at me. I felt like punching him in the face, listening to him say her name, though he didn't say it in a particularly offending manner. "And besides, it was your father who set this up, not me." He shrugged and returned to the ore once again, leaving me to wallow in my rage.
"How long, then?" I said, matching his subdued tone.. Gramps looked up at me and raised an eyebrow, silently scolding me for not using a complete sentence or something. He was so old fashioned. And annoying.
But somehow better than my dad.
"How long have I been engaged?" I yelled, my volume growing with my anger. Gramps thought for a moment before, once again, turning back to the ore. I hated how he acted like his work was more important than me.
"Oh, say…around fifteen years? I think you were four at the time…" He scratched his bald head as if I'd just asked him about when I first started walking. I pounded my fist on the counter, causing him to look at me angrily.
"And in seventeen damn years, you didn't think to tell me?" I felt the tears swimming at the corners of my eyes, but I held them back, refusing to cry in front of this demon of a man. Did he even care for me at all?
"It wasn't relevant," he replied, standing. "And you will not talk to my like that, boy! I'm your grandfather, whether you like it or not!" I growled in frustration and turned away to leave. I swung the door open like I had a thousand times before to see Popuri across the street, watching in what she considered a discreet way, quickly turning away to look like she was feeding the chickens or something. Great, that meant she had heard at least part of the argument and the news would spread like wildfire throughout the town.
"She'll be here in a few weeks, so find a better attitude or she won't be able to stand you either!" Gramps yelled out the door after me. I slammed it shut and strode down the road, passing by Jack's farm and heading to the library. At least this way Mary would hear the news from me and not some gossip-addicted fool like her mother.
Damn, I hated my father! He'd put me through all sorts of shit growing up, and he was never around unless it came to putting me 'in line.' He hadn't treated my mother very well and he'd even given up his only son instead of raising me himself. And now he got to choose my wife?! I definitely thought I had enough justification to hate the bastard, but all I could do was sulk and go along with it. Even though I didn't like it, I knew that arranged marriages in our country were the law, and unless my parents or my fiancée's parents wanted to back out, my fiancée and I would just have to go with it. I wondered briefly if my wife-to-be was as upset as I was when she found out.
Of course, her family probably wasn't as dysfunctional as mine, and they'd probably told her much sooner and she had probably coped with the idea by now.
I sighed as I realized that I'd lost. The only time I'd ever given up on something in my life, and it had to be something as delicate as who I would spend the rest of my life with.
---
Both of my roommates, not to mention my only friends in this Goddess-forsaken town (unless you count Mary), stayed silent for the entirety of my brief tirade. I looked at them expectantly, as if they could've thought of something that I hadn't to get me out of this mess.
"When's she supposed to get here?" Kai asked. I scowled and glared at him. "I mean, when're the 'few weeks' up?" I thought for a moment. The lady downstairs- Kristen, I thought her name was- said that her daughter's birthday was on the tenth. Today was the seventh, and I'd found out about this… around a week ago, maybe more. That all meant… how the hell was I supposed to know what it meant? I was a blacksmith, not a mathematician!
"How the hell am I supposed to know?" I snapped. Kai ignored my irritability and stared off at nothing in particular.
"… So you told Mary already, right?" Cliff asked. My heart practically stopped beating and my anger fled from my body at the sound of her name. I took my hat off and pushed my hair back before putting it back on again.
"Yeah," I said sullenly. Cliff nodded slowly from where he still sat on his bed, his blue eyes, a few shades darker than my own, oozing sympathy. I stared at the floor. "She was… upset. But the only thing she could say was… was that it meant I'd cheated on my fiancée." I looked back up to see Cliff was utterly shocked by this and was stunned silent as Kai turned to me with both eyebrows raised.
"You mean you slept with her?" he asked. I swear I could've punched the fool right in the face for saying that.
"No," I said instead, crossing my arms over my chest. "I guess she has a looser definition of 'cheating' then you, huh, Kai?" Kai shrugged his tanned shoulders at me before looking up at me with mischievous brown eyes.
"Kissing isn't really cheating. Otherwise actors would be cheating all the time, wouldn't they?" he said, earning a sigh from Cliff. "Neither is-"
"Anyways!" Cliff cut in, not wanting to hear Kai's other definitions of not-cheating. "So you met her mom downstairs, then?"
"Oh, is that who that was?" Kai asked. I rolled my eyes. "She was pretty, for being a mom, anyways." I groaned and Cliff slapped his forehead. Kai seemed oblivious to us as he thought Goddess-knows-what about my fiancée... and her mother. Ugh.
"Yes, that's who she was. You think random women come into town to see my grandfather?" I said before Kai could continue, making a face. Kai laughed. "Don't answer that." I added, seeing the gleam in his eyes. I turned back to Cliff, who had seen me leave to go meet up with Gramps and Kristen downstairs earlier. I'd unintentionally snapped at him because I had been in a bad mood, to put it mildly, and hadn't told him what I was doing or why I was dressed up when he'd asked.
"Yeah, I sat and listened to them 'discuss' us and what we're like and stuff," I said with disgust, like the words left a bitter taste in my mouth. "They were talking about us like we were pets or something. I didn't like it, so I came back up here." Cliff looked a little worried, probably because he knew I hadn't just left, but had probably given a piece of my mind to them first. He was right, though I would've given all of my thoughts on the matter if that woman hadn't been there.
At that moment, there was a knock at our bedroom door. Looking at the clock, I saw it was nearly two in the morning. Who could possibly want to talk to any of us at two in the morning? Kai jumped up to answer it, which was fine by me, seeing as I didn't want to deal with people at the moment. And because I didn't want to deal with people, Murphy's Law stated that it had to be for me.
"Hi Ann!" he said enthusiastically. I rolled my eyes, and without even looking at him knew he was giving her that 'charming' smile he gave all the girls. He was probably about to hit on her, but she obviously wasn't in the mood for it and cut him off.
"Listen, I just came up here to give Gray a message from Saibara. Is that alright with you, lover boy?" she replied irritably. Kai turned to me.
"Hey Gray!" he shouted as if I hadn't heard everything myself. I had already gotten up and started towards the door but he insisted on telling me what was up anyway. "Looks like one of your many lady friends are here to see you!" He winked at me. "Stop hogging them all or the rest of us will end up all aloooone!" This earned a glare from me and a slap in the back of his bandana-clad head from Ann. He gaped at Ann, rubbing the back of his head, and backed away from the door to let me take his place.
"What?" I said, offering the girl no greeting, leaning against the door frame and looking down at the short redhead bitterly. I didn't think I would want whatever message it was she was about to give me, and I thought subconsciously that maybe if I glared at her hard enough she would run away or something before telling me what Gramps had said.
Unfortunately, I had no such luck.
"Saibara wanted me to tell you that she'll be here on the seventeenth," she said calmly, completely unfazed by my coldness to her. She raised an eyebrow at me inquisitively with tired blue eyes. "Who's 'she'?" I rolled my eyes, not really wanting to go through this again, and wondering why she hadn't heard about it. She was in on the gossip loop, wasn't she? There's no way Popuri hadn't mentioned it to anyone... after all, it'd been over a week! I returned my attention to the girl in front of me and debated on how I should answer her question.
"Ask Popuri," I replied. "Goodnight." See? I wasn't completely rude.
"But-" I cut her off before she could argue by slamming the door in her face. Yeah, I wasn't rude. I was a complete gentleman if I ever saw one. I heard her stomp downstairs as I walked back to my bed. I threw off my tightly-fitting dress shirt that my grandfather had insisted that I wear, kicked off my shoes and took off my pants before climbing into bed, putting my hat on the table. The other two, taking the hint that I didn't want to talk about it any more, did more or less the same, and Kai turned off the light on his way to bed.
"'Night, Graaaaaay," Kai said in a teasing tone. I threw my shoe in his general direction and heard an 'oof', and a satisfied smile crept across my face as I drifted off to sleep for the second time that night.
---
All sorts of scenes played through my head that night. It started out pretty normal, actually. I dreamt that Gramps had let me be and that I'd proposed to Mary like I planned. She'd hugged me and said yes, and then the scene switched to the wedding. She was so beautiful in her long white dress, and even in my dream I felt awkward in my tux, and for a moment I thought that it was my real life and I'd dreamt everything about me being engaged to Cassandra.
But then a girl who looked like Kristen, except younger, burst through the doors angrily, right after Pastor Carter had asked if there were any objections, like they did in the movies. But there wasn't going to be a pronouncement of love or anything like that; Cassandra stormed over to me yelling about how I'd cheated on her. The whole church gasped and I was basically exiled from the small town…
Then my dream switched. Now I was walking down the street holding hands with a girl who was skipping along beside me. She only reached my waist and had looked kind of childish, and for a minute I thought she was my kid. But then I saw the ring on her left hand, and when I looked at mine, I saw I wore one to match. I tried to stop walking and wrench my hand free, but she was too strong and dragged me unwillingly down the cobblestone path, giggling and laughing the entire time.
Once again my dream changed and I found myself on the edge of the dock at the beach. What was I doing at the beach, anyways? I hated the beach. It didn't take long for me to realize that there was a storm brewing and the waves were crashing against the dock loudly, as if they were trying to reach me. I was wearing the same ring from the last dream, though I was a few years older, it looked like. Suddenly I heard my name being called and I turned around to see the angry figure of my wife, her hair billowing around her as she ran towards me, but I ignored her and turned back to the raging ocean. She shouted angrily at me, much like Gramps did on a daily basis, which really ticked me off. Then I hurled myself off the end of the dock, my hat flying off my head during the jump and washing back up to shore. I swam out to sea, and looking back I saw my wife standing on the shore with my hat, yelling something about me being worthless, but I couldn't hear her because a wave crashed down on me and caused me to tumble into the darkness.
"Gray!"
I sat up in my bed, sweating and panting, to see Kai and Cliff standing on either side of me.
"Are you alright?" Kai said. I glared up at him. Did it look like I was alright?
"Yeah, I'm fine," I lied. "Just had a nightmare…" The two men looked at each other incredulously, then looked back at me.
"Are you serious? In all the years we've been roommates, you've never, ever acted like that," Cliff said. Kai nodded.
"Must've been a doozy, huh?" he said with a grin. "I mean, you should've seen yourself! Rolling around and muttering stuff…" He trailed off at my threatening gaze and I stood up, my bare feet hitting the hardwood floor with a thud. He looked down at me-only a few inches, mind you- with an eyebrow raised and crossed his arms, apparently waiting for an explanation.
"Yeah, a real 'doozy'," I mumbled. I walked over to my dresser and grabbed some clothes before heading into the bathroom, but Kai followed closely. Cliff had left, probably to go to work. Which, I realized, I was late for.
"She scares you that much, huh?" Kai said thoughtfully. I stopped walking and glared at him.
"No." He grinned at me, and I immediately didn't like where this was going. I started rushing off to the bathroom, hoping to slam the door shut and start the water before whatever it was he was planning could work itself out in his mind. I managed to get through the door, but Kai put his foot against it before I could close it.
"I'll just come with you, then. I can protect you from the little lady." He offered me a smile and a wink. I groaned, wondering what he could possibly mean by that, but I didn't have the time or the patience to argue with this man so I decided to go along with it. Despite what he was implying I knew he wouldn't do anything too horribly wrong. Well, I hoped so anyway.
"…Fine." He smiled at me and walked away, whistling cheerfully and swinging his keys around on his finger, obviously pleased with himself. I shut the door and leaned against it, sliding my hand down my face in frustration.
Musing over the situation, I thought that it might not be so bad having Kai there with me when I met my future wife. I sure could use the support, after all. Of course, he could also make things a bit… awkward, if he wanted to. I wondered what he was planning but couldn't really think of anything and gave up with a sigh, content to tell myself that he was just offering to be there for me as a friend.
After all, what could possibly go wrong?
