Seasons in the Sun
Part Two of Five
Chapter Two: Cross My Heart . . .
By Gabi-hime (pinkfluffynet@yahoo.com)
Spoilers: The end of Angelic Layer TV
Pairings: Misaki/Oujiro, Shuuko/Icchan, Tamayo/Koutaro, Kaede/Sai, Ringo/Clary, although primarily Misaki Oujirou and Kaede/Sai
Rating: PG
Synopsis: Four years after the third National Angelic Layer tournament, the grand circuit deuses of Angelic Layer finally leave their fields of gold.
---
Jounouchi Sai hated the smell of hospitals. Who could really trust a place that smelled so much of anesthetic, disinfectant, and profound loss? Hospitals were like waiting rooms for the land of the dead. Even then they weren't a place of resolution and peace. They were a place of double-speaking doctors and endless waiting. It was almost as if the doctors had a certain quota of coffins to fill that they had to try to trick people into by convincing them it was "their time." Hospitals weren't a place where you went to get better. They were a place where you went to die.
Sai had been aware of this truth for ages, ever since Lin had been lowered into the ground for her eternal rest. She had desperately hoped that her next visit to the morticians masquerading as merciful angels would not come for years and years, if ever. She had told Kaede that she didn't want to die in a hospital, all wrapped up and bleached of color, devoid of life even before her heart monitor slowed into oblivion.
She had never thought, never even considered in the years since she had last been in this hospital that she would end up by the bedside of the person who had taught her to take joy in life again. Kaede was the summer sun. She'd never been ill once in the time that Sai had known her. Perhaps that was one of the reasons that she had eventually been able to get close to her. Kaede was eternal. There was no risk that she might abandon her, that she might need tending, that she might . . .
Kaede had never needed taking care of. She wasn't a child. She wasn't frail. She was always the one taking care of everyone else. Perhaps this was why it had been easy to take Kaede's reassurances that the headaches were nothing, that they were simply from too much stress. The Grand Circuit was stressful, there was no doubting that, and Sai had wanted to believe her. Perhaps Sai had even been playing a game to fool herself. There was nothing wrong with Kaede. There was nothing wrong with Kaede. There was nothing wrong with Kaede. Say it three times and click your heels and it's sure to come true.
But when Sai opened her eyes she was still standing alone in the antiseptic white bathroom that smelled of formaldahyde or arsenic or something very clean yet very wrong, hands loose and bare against the cool ceramic of the wall sink. She would not cry. She would not cry. She would not cry. Ice Machine Sai did not cry . . . at least not in public.
They'd come looking for her in a few minutes. One of them at least, Misaki probably, if she could spare herself from Kaede's bedside. No, she probably couldn't, not with managing Minoru at the same time. She'd send Oujirou instead. Sai had a few minutes to herself in the bathroom until he came. He would politely allow her a little time to compose herself and then knock deftly three times. It was his way.
Ice Machine Sai did not cry in public, but the people who had become her new family over the past few years knew that she occasionally cried while she was alone. Oujirou would be tactful enough to wait until Sai was ready to face everything again. He somehow always knew. It was like some bizarre sort of sixth sense which only operated to keep his gentlemanly smoothness functioning. It was uncanny, and had the situation been different she might be sharing a smile with Kaede over the fact that Oujirou was probably now politely working the lady's restroom.
But the situation was not different, no matter how many times she folded and unfolded her shaking hands that quivered until she firmly gripped the sink again. There was nothing wrong with Kaede. There was nothing wrong with Kaede. There was nothing wrong with Kaede.
That they knew how to fix.
It had been the same way with Lin. Those same three words had been haunting her sleep for years, giving her nightmares that she didn't share with anyone, not even Kaede. She hated doctors. They were useless or perhaps purposefully helpless. Give them anything more complicated than the sniffles and they simply shrugged their shoulders and gave up, or better yet gently patted you on the shoulder and told you to be strong because that's what she needed most, while they went back secretly to their break rooms and filled out one way tickets to the funeral parlor. They had a quota to keep after all. If they couldn't trick people into dying, then where were they going to put all the babies that they were constantly churning out.
Be strong for her, that's what she needs most. In those few words they'd betrayed just how little they knew about everything. Kaede didn't need her to be strong. Kaede was the strong one. She's be strong for all of them, no matter what happened. She'd be strong for Sai.
God knows Sai hadn't been strong for years. Perhaps she had never been. Not like Kaede. None of them even came close to touching Kaede's strength, that warm inner hearth fire that was always open to them, open to everyone who needed it. None of them had that strength, except perhaps Misaki. Sai could take whatever was thrown at her on the layer or off of it. Pain and suffering were not new to her, but only as long as they came only to her. She could take it if the doctors told her that she only had two or three days to live. She could not take it if they told her Kaede had only two or three days to live.
She could not take it if they simply shrugged and said nothing at all.
It made no sense. It contradicted the unwritten laws of their lives. Life had been nothing but roses since Misaki had come into their lives. Kaede jokingly referred to her as "our lucky charm" out of her hearing and Sai had agreed. Wherever Misaki went she sorted out personal relationships and troubles and set them to rights. She had touched more people in four years than Sai could hope to in a lifetime. She was their inspiration just as Kaede was their mother. They had built themselves a beautiful little family.
Bad things don't happen to good people. Not more than once. Not this often.
Kaede had lost her mother and step-father three years ago to devastating car accident, but they had all pulled together and had handled it. It had been hard, but they had gotten through it. Kaede had adapted to living alone with Minoru, thanks to the others providing their unwavering support. Sai had simply stood silently in the background providing Kaede with something to lean against from time to time. Even mothers get tired. Sai knew her place in their family.
It did not involve a seat at a bedside in the intensive care ward.
She was so tired. She'd been on her feet for more hours than she cared to recall. The program had called for them to be at the Kantou Exhibition Grounds at five in the morning. Kaede had collapsed at two and had been airlifted immediately to the hospital. There hadn't been space for her in the chopper so Ogata had offered to drive her. She didn't even remember getting into the car, but then she was on the seventh floor, the intensive care ward, and arguing with the duty nurse over her relation to Kaede. The nurse had insisted that only family members could visit with a patient in such critical condition. She hadn't cared when Sai had furiously demanded to be allowed in, hadn't known how shocking it was to see Ice Machine Sai lose control. It had been a blessing that Mihara Ichirou had arrived on the floor just then. Shuuko had gently ushered the white-hot-cold-hot Sai away to the water fountain while Icchan explained the situation. If they hadn't been there . . . well, perhaps then Sai would be occupying a very different cell than the self-imposed ivory-tiled bathroom.
She flexed fingers and then cracked her knuckles. They had all come, faster than she had imagined. Icchan had seen about informing most of them, oddly serious and in control of the situation. Sai hadn't been in control of anything, she'd simply let it all happen around her as she sat, white-knuckled grip on the metal rail of Kaede's hospital bed. Kaede had not yet regained consciousness, and the doctors offered no hope, simply shrugged and offered their death sentence.
"We don't know."
Hatoko was there first, oddly. She came in and laid a hand silently on Kaede's still arm and then settled Blanche very carefully into the bed with her. Blanche. In all the confusion of the airlift and the rush to the hospital, Sai had forgotten all about Blanche and Shirahime. Of course Kaede would want Blanche. Trust their youngest to think first of how Kaede doted on her 'daughter.' Hatoko looked up at Sai with eyes too solemn and wide to belong to a child and then spoke simply.
"Your grief is my grief."
She had already prepared herself for the worst, this strange little girl too old for her years. She had offered Shirahime to Sai without reproach. Sometimes our worry will make us forget even those most precious to us. With the weight of the doll solidly in her lap, Sai felt that she should be at least a little more at peace, but no peace came. It was not that simple.
Tamayo and Koutaro stood silently in the doorway, unwilling to come in and spoil the quiet moment that passed between the young guru and the elder master. They were always there, hovering at the periphery. Kaede had doted on the tomboyish girl, taught her how to dress like a lady when she chose to, taught her that it was all right to dress like herself the rest of the time. Now they were unsure of how far this hospitality extended, like second cousins at a wedding. The girl was wringing her hands, twisting something rumpled over and over, tying it in knots. Sai recognized it as a hat Kaede had given her for Christmas, knitted with her own two hands. The young man said nothing and simply averted his eyes. Hatoko put a slim cool hand on Sai's own and then spoke again.
"Your grief is also her grief," she murmured, nodding to the angel who was curled silently in her lap, "Do not forget that."
Sai said nothing in response, but the girl seemed satisfied that her duty had been discharged. She stood on an empty chair to kiss Kaede on the forehead with lips that Sai somehow knew were just as chill as her hands, and then turned to go with the other two mourners to sit at the end of the hall and watch the rain come down outside. It was as if the wake had already started.
Ringo was next, all glitter and spangles and small chiming bells because she'd been on stage when she'd gotten the call. She had dropped everything, informed the fans that she had to go and Clary had wrapped her up in a too-long trench coat and had driven her to the hospital himself. At the concert, a sudden chill went through the crowd as the news finally reached the public. They let Ringo go without a murmur and quietly went home to stay tight by their television sets to listen for further news of Saitou Kaede.
The grown-up child who was Seto Ringo did not know what to do. It became clear that she was unused to dealing with situations of personal tragedy when she came tinkling into the room and could think of nothing else to do but hug Sai. Sai had not responded to this either, but Ringo had whispered warm and sweet in her ear,
"It's all right. Everything will be all right. You'll see. Everything."
Yellow brick roads and ruby slippers still existed for Seto Ringo. In fact her world was made almost entirely of them: glitter and spangles and small chiming bells. Sai felt an empty place deep inside of her where the princes, castles, and fairy tales had been. Perhaps Kaede was under a curse from an evil witch. That would explain why the doctors could do nothing, wanted to do nothing. Perhaps they were afraid of the witch. All it would take was true love's first kiss from a handsome prince and then Kaede would open her eyes again and they'd all live happily ever after. Again.
But Kaede had no handsome prince, and the only one they knew of had already allocated all of his kisses. Sai gritted her teeth. Ice Machine Sai did not cry in public. Certainly not in front of Seto Ringo. Clary had come to her rescue and gently led Ringo away, out to the end of the hallway where the others were waiting and watching the rain, reading two year old magazines and eating stale candy from the vending machine.
If Sai thought it would wake Kaede up, she'd beg Oujirou to kiss Kaede half-a-hundred times.
But they had already had their happily ever after. A cute little forest spirit had rounded them all up and brought them together. Such things do not happen more than once.
Ogata had gone to fetch Minoru from school, sent by Icchan who still patrolled the hallway. Every once in a while he would stop and dial a number urgently on his mobile phone, and every time he would grunt and then hang up. He could no locate Oujirou, and with Oujirou was the glue that bound them all together, their beneficent spirit, their lucky charm. Suzuhara Misaki was not with them, and there was a chair standing open at Sai's left that was meant to hold her.
It was Shuuko who handled Minoru when he came, silent and still, with eyes as wide as Hatoko's. Sai could not do it. She did not know how. She would not trust herself with him. They had competed too much over Kaede's attentions in the early days after the accident when she had first had to be both mother and sister to the little boy. Misaki had helped bring them together, had reminded Sai that she was the adult, but she knew that Minoru had never quite forgiven her for monopolizing his sister's time, and as he sat silently in the chair meant for Misaki, Sai could hear his unspoken challenge. He had more right to be in her place. He was family.
She almost snorted derisively but kept herself in check. The last thing she needed to do was make a child cry on his sister's deathbe . . .
She was more than family.
She needed Misaki. They all needed Misaki. Misaki would calm Minoru. Misaki would cheer them all. Misaki would tell them all that it was going to be all right, and Sai would believe her. Ringo's reassurance had been almost desperate, but Misaki's would ring true with her heart and soul. Misaki had proved that she could do anything. If she could reconcile Ichirou and Oujirou then she could damn well make Kaede get better.
Minoru watched her fumble with her moblie phone, watched her mutter Oujirou's name to the autodial, watched her knuckles whiten again on the guard rail as she listened to the rings. He watched her and said nothing, then stood and went to the window where he stared out at the rain impassively.
When the phone had finally connected she had been incoherent for a full minute before marshaling her will and tightening up her voice. She coolly informed Oujirou of the situation and even included the dreaded words "They don't know," without batting an eye. Ice Machine Sai did not show weakness to other people.
Be strong. She needs you to be strong for her. That was almost laughable. No, with Kaede . . . asleep, Sai had to be strong for herself. There was no one else to do it for her. Sai had to be strong for everyone else, not for Kaede. If she fell apart now, then who would Misaki look to for firm and silent support while she worked her magic? Not Oujirou, certainly. He would be playing genteel comforter to everyone else. They needed Sai to be herself, to be cold, collected, and in control.
Then suddenly Minoru had been scooped up and held tightly before being deposited again by the bedside and Misaki was climbing awkwardly into the uncomfortable plastic chair that had been left open for her, hair help back at the nape of her neck with clips but still so obviously Misaki no matter what she might try to be incognito. She gave Sai a smile and her voice, so small in the large empty room, came reassuring and gentle and suddenly Sai knew why they'd all been waiting for her.
"I love you, Kaede-san," she had said gently, leaning forward to tuck Blanche in a little better, "We all love you, Kaede-san, and we're waiting for you to wake up. All of us."
Sai had forced her eyes shut and stumbled away from the bed, toward the bathroom she knew was in the hall. Ice Machine Sai did not cry in public.
She cried in private where no one could see except Shirahime, who never commented.
Jounouchi Sai washed her face and then waited for the gentle knock she knew would soon follow. It was time and they were waiting for her. Sai would be strong for them.
*
How the hours passed, she did not know, but they passed quickly as she tended bedside, cuddled Minoru, and occasionally went out into the hallway to see how Oujirou was faring with the others. They were all still clustered at the end of the hallway, sharing hard vinyl chairs and empty small talk. Koutaro had been idly spinning the wheels of the bent bicycle that she and Oujirou had been forced to bring upstairs with them. Hatoko had fallen asleep on Tamayo's lap. It was a school night but she doubted any of them would be making it to class in the morning.
On one of the trips out into the hallway she'd been mobbed by some children in wheel chairs. Later she would find out that they were from the terminal cancer ward a floor up and had camped outside of Kaede's room specifically to meet her. She had given them all tired kisses on the forehead before Ringo had arrived to save the day and started handing out autographs. Misaki resolved to come and visit them next week, when all this was done with. Next week when everything was better. At the moment she could only handle comforting so many people at a time.
Unlike Hatoko, Minoru had not succumb to sleep, although the other girl was a few years his senior. Misaki supposed that if Koutaro had collapsed and was unconscious in a hospital bed that Hatoko would still be up, silent and watchful. As it was, Hatoko could do nothing and thus had the good sense to get some sleep while nothing was happening and she was not needed. Bless Hatoko, she was setting a good example. Perhaps the others would follow it. The last thing Kaede needed was to wake up and find all her friends passed out exhausted.
Of course, sleep was all well and good for the rest of them, but Misaki knew that she had to keep vigil with Sai and Minoru. It was her place to do so. They needed her there, smiling until she strained, holding her worried tears inside where they wouldn't upset anyone. They needed her assurance that everything would turn out all right.
She squeezed Sai's hand and then squeezed Minoru's. Neither of them reacted, but she knew that they were glad she was there, if only as a buffer between them. She was the only one in the room that talked, and she talked to Kaede at length, describing what everyone was doing, talking about anything that she could think of. Whenever she ran out of things to discuss she went out into the hallway and checked on everyone and this always spurred another thought into her head. It was her own little mantra. As long as she kept herself busy talking about something then she knew that she wouldn't break down. She knew that she wouldn't sob like a child over this woman-girl who lay asleep as if in death. Their own girl. She was the real princess of Angelic Layer, always sweet and kind and elegant, with the best manners. Saitou Kaede, their mother, summer child, sun touched. She was the warm hearth fire that would always guide them home. Nothing. Nothing could happen to Kaede.
Misaki needed some air.
What time was it? One thirty. They'd been here for hours. She stood alone in the stairwell and breathed in the warm processed air. She was so tired, her hands loose around the metal banister, so tired. It wasn't like her to be this tired. Something had stolen all her strength away. She let go of the metal bar to rub her forehead and even as she did she felt herself lose balance. It happened so slowly, her fingers splaying and reaching for the bar that was just too far away, trying to twist away from the stairs. As she peered over the edge she felt an intense feeling of vertigo. As she looked down it was almost the same as looking up, as looking into heaven. She was going to fall straight down the center of the stairwell and there was nothing she could do. Oh, if only she had wings. That would make the falling much easier, she thought nonsensically as her feet finally lost their grip on the floor and she was free in space.
And then suddenly she was seized around the waist and hauled roughly back over the banister, arms in a vice grip around her as if she might dissipate like the lifting fog. Dumbly she looked up. It was Oujirou.
"I fell," she said stupidly, blinking twice.
"No you didn't," he responded just as stupidly, "I caught you."
"I know."
Who knows how long their eloquent exchange might have continued had Ichirou not opened the heavy door to the stairwell and stood there leaning against it, quite ignoring the fact that it looked like Oujirou had Misaki in one of Tamayo's signature wrestling moves.
"Oujirou," he said shortly, "Take the Grand Champion home. She's tired. Shuu and I will handle things here. I'll call you if anything comes up."
Oujirou simply grunted in response and then set Misaki down gently as Ichirou turned and let the door swing shut on hydrolic hinges.
"I didn't say goodnight to everyone," Misaki squeaked, finally coming back to herself.
He squeezed her shoulder and looked away rubbing his nose as if there were something on it, "Then go say goodnight. I have to get the bicycle anyway."
She turned after him curiously, "Oujirou-san?"
Suddenly his grip on her shoulder became fierce and he turned to face her, eyes wet with tears. He quivered. She had never seen him like this, had never seen him lose his cool composure, not once in all the time she had known him.
His voice was low and fierce and quite lacking in the mature and elegant quality it usually carried.
"Misaki, please. Stay with me tonight. I need you."
He was begging her, and there was a mournful needy note to his low, throaty voice. He was hurting so much, he was hurting and could not show it because he was the Prince. The family needed his gentle grace the same way they needed Misaki's unconquerable hope. She was the only one. She was the only one he could tell. She closed her eyes tight and leaned against him, forgetting that they were in a public place, no matter how deserted. He wrapped his arms around her and held her so tightly that for a moment she thought she might break.
When he let her go, he held her at arms length and looked at her. She fidgeted and turned the ring on her finger around once and then smiled weakly.
"Just let me tell them all goodnight. They expect me to."
She smiled gently and turned to go back to the rest of them, leaving him to collect their belongings and shoulder the half-mangled bike that had so recently sealed the contract of their lives.
*