Chapter 25: Forgive, Never Forget

Baron watched the couple walk together through the castle gardens from his window. A frown was steadily making its way across his tawny face.

"That boy's trouble," he said finally with a growl.

Muta, who had long ago retreated to his newspaper in an attempt to ignore Baron's depressed state, looked up. "Machida, you mean?" he mumbled from behind the paper.

Another growl from the half-cat confirmed Muta's suspicions.

"Why is she even spending time with him?" Baron continued to grumble. "He shot her, for goodness sake!"

"Maybe it's because she likes him," Muta retorted. He kept the newspaper firmly between him and Baron purposely to avoid the glare that followed.

"He's an arrogant, conceited cub who thinks he can get anything," Baron snapped, reverting to cat vocabulary in his irritation.

"Baron, you've been avoiding Haru for the last week. I think you gave up the right to complain about who she chooses as companions since then."

The black half-cat in the castle gardens leant in and said something that made the brunette laugh in response; a smile appearing that Baron had missed terribly so. He missed making her smile like that.

"Anyway," continued Muta, "he seems to be making her laugh. I'd thought you'd be happy about that."

Baron didn't have any civil response to that. Instead he just settled with clenching his jaw.

Frustrated with his friend's continued silence, Muta got up, forsaking the newspaper and walked over to the half-cat. "You know, maybe she wouldn't be spending so much time with him if you actually started talking to her again," he said crustily.

"She won't want to talk to me. Not after what I said and not now she's got him." A coarse streak of anger spread through his system that he hid well. He didn't trust the youth, simple as that. But Haru wanted to be human, and that was exactly what Machida could offer. However, the thought of Haru choosing to spend the rest of her life with him burned. The image Baron had had a while ago of Haru taking on a normal life returned to him, but this time it hurt more than before. It was a lot more painful when the place of husband was taken by a person he could imagine. When it wasn't just a dark silhouette, but the form of Machida.

He closed his eyes, trying to shut it out, but that only seemed to make it worse.

Instead he glanced down at the couple again, although he didn't know how that'd make him feel better. This time the half-cat was doing some fancy magic tricks. Baron snorted in a very un-like him manner. "Parlour tricks," he muttered mutinously.

Muta looked down to where Baron's gaze was trained. "Erm, Baron, you did pretty much the same thing when you met her."

Baron grumbled unintelligible words.

Muta huffed and returned to his seat. "Suit yourself. Sulk for all I care."

"I'm not sulking," groused Baron from the windowsill.

The cream cat snorted in his usual manner. "Yeah, keep telling yourself that."

ooOoo

"We need to get them to talk."

Muta grunted. Toto took this to be an affirmative.

"We need to get them to realise that this is all a big misunderstanding."

Muta grunted again, but there was a bitter twist of humour to it this time. "And how are you going to achieve that, birdbrain? He's avoiding her, she's avoiding him. I really can't see how you're going to get them to talk. Short of locking them in the same room, of course."

There was a pause, and the two exchanged fugitive glances.

"Muta, I think you may have just hit upon something there."

ooOoo

"I don't get it," Haru complained as she allowed herself to be dragged along by Muta. "Why couldn't Machida have just come out to the gardens to talk to me?"

"You'll see, Chicky."

"Why did he request to see me in the- ow, can you slow down a bit?" she demanded.

"I'm on a tight schedule."

Haru huffed. "Why did Machida want to see me in the library?"

"I dunno, Chicky, I'm just delivering the messages."

They came to the door to the library, where Toto was perched on a nearby table. Haru saw the glint of something metallic in his talons and her suspicions made themselves know. "Why...?" she began to ask, but Muta abruptly open the door, shoved her inside and slammed the door.

"Quick, quick, the key, featherbreath!" the cat snapped from the other side.

Too late Haru realised what they were planning on doing; she heard the click of the lock turn.

"Haru?" came a familiar voice from the other side of the library.

Haru spun round. "Baron? What are... what are you doing here?"

"I came to read. What about you?"

"I was tricked. If you would just excuse me for a moment, Baron," she said as politely as she could manage. She turned to the door. "MUTA, IF YOU DON'T LET ME OUT THIS INSTANCE I WILL SHAVE YOU AND DROP YOU IN THE LAKE, I SWEAR!" she bellowed at the door.

Baron winced. That girl had one powerful set of lungs.

There was silence from the other side of the door.

The half-cat sighed and left his seat. "Muta? Whatever you're up to, you've had your fun. Now unlock the door." He tried the handle. Still locked.

He stared at the door a moment longer before sweeping it aside as a lost case and returned to his chair and book.

"That's it?" Haru demanded.

Baron raised one furry eyebrow. "That's what?"

"That's all you plan on doing?"

Baron flicked his eyes calmly back down to his book. "Yes."

"But surely... surely you can use your magic or something?"

"They've set up wards around the library to stop my portals," he answered coolly, "and I've only just realised this now because I've just tried that." His eyes didn't leave his book. "The only other way out of here is the windows–" he casually motioned to the tall windows set several metres up "–and I expect Muta will have also locked those. But, if you're that desperate, you could always try."

Haru glowered at him. "Fat lot of good you are."

"Hm-mm," murmured Baron, still not looking over at her, "I know."

"I'm glaring at you, Baron," she told him flatly.

"I'd guessed."

Her mouth set into a thin line. Still glowering she stormed over to one of the many bookshelves and snatched down a book. She chose a seat at the other end of the extensive library and sat in it, doing her best to avoid making eye contact with the tawny cat.

After several minutes, when Baron was sure the initial storm of annoyance had blown over, he glanced over at the girl. She was curled up on the chair, book in hand and an endearing expression on her human face. One strand of hair, as always, had fallen over her eyes.

As if sensing his gaze, she looked up. Baron coughed uncomfortably and went back to his own book. It was weird; in so little a time they had gone from chatting about almost anything, to this. To sitting at opposite ends of the library, pretending the other didn't exist.

Well, he wasn't about to leave it like that, he decided. He looked up again and started to say, "I didn't realise–" but at the same time, Haru said, "So how's–"

They stared at each other with deeply embarrassed expressions for a moment, both of their faces reddening slightly, before Baron broke the silence with, "You first."

"I was... just going to ask how Toto is," Haru said eventually. "I haven't seen him around much and I just assumed that you would, with him being your familiar and all. Well, I saw him just as he locked me in, but I haven't seen him around before that..." Her last few words had slowly died into nonexistence as her face took on a deeper shade of red, the words sounding clumsy and awkward on her tongue even to her.

"Oh. He's good, he's good. He's..." Baron tried to find more words on the subject, to prolong the rapidly dissolving conversation, but none came and in the end he just ended lamely with, "good," again.

"Oh."

Another awkward silence.

"What was it that you wanted to say?" Haru volunteered.

"What? Oh, yes, I didn't realise that you knew Machida."

"He was in my class," Haru said shortly.

"Oh. Did you get on well?"

"We knew each other." Haru didn't want to say more.

"That's..." he resisted saying 'good' once again and finished with, "nice."

"It is," Haru said firmly, as if daring him to contradict it.

Again, they lapsed into awkward silence.

Baron's eyes wandered once again to the slim brunette. His gaze softened, as did his heart whenever he saw her. He couldn't just continue with this blasé avoidance of each other. He glanced down at his book. Ignoring her had been a little too easy at the start, but now his conscious was tugging irritably at his mind. Truth be told, he wanted to talk to her. Talk to her easily like they had what seemed like a lifetime ago.

He glanced once more at the book, which was quickly losing its hold over him. Hoping he wouldn't regret his decision, he placed the book on the table beside him and got up.

The sound of the book hitting wood jolted Haru out of her own reading, which wasn't a hard feat, since all her nerves seemed to be on high alert. She looked over to Baron and saw him rising to his feet. She, in turn, half closed her own book, placing one hand on the page she'd been on.

"What is it, Baron?"

He stood before her, like an awkward schoolboy sent to the head's office. "Haru..."

"Yes, Baron?" Her short questions helped to stop the nerves creeping into her voice. She was afraid that if she said anything longer, her voice would surely shake. But this did not seem to be helping Baron.

"We... we both made mistakes back there," Baron started falteringly. Neither of them needed to know where 'back there' was. "We said things we didn't mean, things we shouldn't have said..."

Haru looked down at her own hands. Yes, yes they had. Yes, they'd made huge, massive mistakes.

"But..." He coughed, trying to find the right words. "But we knew that. We knew it was a mistake and... and we shouldn't let that ruin our... friendship." He had been going to say 'relationship', but felt it carried too much burden with it. He looked down, his face burning. No words of wisdom or calming phrases came to mind; his head was too full of swirling emotions.

He waited for a response; none came. He looked up. Haru looked like she was battling with some inner demons.

"I suppose..." he added clumsily, to cover the silence, "what I'm asking is can we start again?" He wanted to ask whether they could pretend it had never happened, but he knew too much had been said; too much hurt had been caused for that to ever be able to happen.

Haru still didn't answer. Instead she only got to her feet, placing the book behind her. She looked up at him for a moment longer, then pulled him into a hug. "I thought you'd never ask," she whispered. "Dammit, Baron, I thought you hated me."

He returned the embrace. "Hate you?" he murmured back. "How could I ever hate you?"

"I thought... after what I said..."

"Hey, you weren't the only one to say things you regret," Baron comforted her. "I shouldn't have shouted at you. Or swore," he added after a moment's thought. He winced at the memory.

A smile Baron hadn't seen directed at him for what felt like years lit softly upon the brunette's face. "I've missed you, Baron," she told him quietly.

ooOoo

Toto flew back in, circling down from the window.

"So what's happening?" Muta demanded.

The crow smirked. "They're talking at last."

"Does it look good?"

"Well, they were hugging last time I checked."

"Really?" Muta partly wished he could fly out to the library windows so he could see the remarkable scene, not that he was about to admit that to Toto.

"Yes, so it's looking very good. Do you think we should unlock the door now?"

Muta snorted. "Amateur," he muttered. "No, we'll leave them locked together for a little while longer yet. After all the trouble we went to for this, I'm not going to risk it backfiring on us."

ooOoo

A/N: Yes, Baron is jealous at the start of this chapter. Even if it isn't quite consistent with his character in the movie, I just couldn't resist casting him, however long or brief, into the jealous role. Anyway, if I followed his character from the movie too strictly, he would only ever admit to "admiring a young woman who speaks from the heart" and that'd stink.

Sorry for the delays, late replies and absent notes over the last couple of weeks; it's been a hectic, chaotic time and between Christmas, get-togethers, illnesses and disappointments, I haven't been all here recently. But things should be looking up and I hope I can get back on track soon. Thanks for all the patience and have a good weekend.

Catsafari. =^^=