PART VI
Tsukasa was working hard on some papers when the maid came in. "Pardon me, young master," she said in a muted voice, and began to clean. Tsukasa's shoulders stirred slightly, but other than that, he didn't respond to the appearance of the woman behind him.
She sprayed some liquid onto a dustrag and began to work. "Can you really do work in a place as dusty as this?" she murmured not-quite under her breath. He didn't respond, and she went on, putting an odd emphasis on her words. "I mean, for a weed like myself, I wouldn't have any other choice, but..."
At the sound of the word "weed," Tsukasa turned a little. The maid averted her eyes quickly. "Oh, I'm sorry, young master." she apologized. "Forgive me for interrupting your work. I'll be quieter."
Half-turned but still unable to see her face, Tsukasa remained frozen a moment. A sound moved from the back of his throat into the air. "Ma--"
"Maids aren't supposed to speak, I know," the maid interrupted hastily. "And Tama-senpai told me I must act like a perfect maid. Otherwise," she added meaningfully, "I'll be caught on camera and that will be the end of me. Do you know what I mean, young master?"
Tsukasa turned his back to her again and rose to his feet. "...Yeah," he said slowly. "But keep talking. Just so I know you're still here."
If he'd been facing her, Tsukasa would have seen a grin of delight cross the young girl's face. "All right... but what should I talk about? Now that you've asked me to talk, I can't think of a thing to say..."
"Anything's good," said Tsukasa, a pensive, musing tone to his voice. "Tell me a story or something." He had crossed the room to the mantle and was carefully rearranging the items that stood there, huddling them in a tight group.
The maid knelt and began polishing the floors with long, earnest strokes. "A story.... all right then," she said softly. "Once upon a time, there was a prince who lived in his castle. And he decided one of the common people should be his princess."
"I was thinking the other day," Shigeru commented lightly as she stirred her tea, "about Princess Diana."
"Diana?" Kaede was still wary. Although she had sat down at the table opposite the young girl, she was still not sure what she had in store... and being spoken to so cattily by a member of her children's generation was somewhat irritating. Still, the O'okawahara Group was an important connection, and if she ever wanted to get her hands on those oil holdings, she had to play nicely.
"What a shame, what happened to her," the blonde sighed. "Don't you agree, ma'am? That fame should be her undoing. But I suppose once you leave a normal life, you can never return to it."
"She had a good amount to be thankful for," Kaede snorted. "If she chose to throw that away, it was her own waste. But I fail to see how this connects with my reason for being here, O'okawahara-san. Have you got something to say that's relevant?"
Tsukasa had walked about the room several times, throwing his coat across the back of a sofa, fixing the hands of a grandfather clock to the wrong time, opening and closing various closet doors in a steady rhythm. Meanwhile, the maid had continued her story, and her voice had lost its sickly sweet lilt in the telling and become a much truer, rounder tone.
"The girl he chose would have rather lived on a farm than in a castle. But the prince was determined to make her his, and so he captured her and locked her in a tower. She tried to escape so many times, even though she had everything she could ever wish for in the fancy rooms of the palace. The prince visited her every day to talk to her and make sure she was happy, but she wasn't, and he didn't understand why.
"Finally he gave up and let her go," the maid said softly. "And the girl was happy as she always was, and free, but she found herself lacking something. Then she realized that the one thing she truly missed was the prince. All the things he'd offered her meant nothing, but seeing his face every day and talking to him had become something precious to her. So even if the prince had let her go," she said softly, "she found she couldn't let him go. So back to the palace she went... just to see him again."
The silence after her words seemed long and pronounced. Tsukasa was kneeling on the floor examining the pipes running from the walls to the heating vents, the maid still scrubbing the floor just in back of him. For a long moment, nothing seemed to move or even breathe in the room.
"Can I see that rag a moment?" Tsukasa asked.
"Huh?" The maid was surprised. "Sure..." She stretched forward to pass it over his shoulder. With a single, deft movement, he draped it over the mouth of one of the heating pipes.
"That should do it," he said.
And he reached back.
His whole body turning, in one movement, he grabbed the maid's wrist - pulled her in to meet him - a hand on her waist - supporting her - her body going limp - the warmth of his arms - the strength of his muscles - so tense - oh god it felt like it had been so long --
two sets of eyes meeting for just a moment, just a flash of recognition, a confirmation -
and oh how he kissed her then - his lips - his breath - his hands holding her whole body so close, ever closer, closer, like he never wanted to be even a breath away from her ever again... her hands found their way into his hair... her eyes welled with tears.... but not tears of fear, tears of joy and relief ... and how well she kissed him back...!
"How did you..?" he began to say.
"Shh, kiss me more," she begged. And he did.
"Oh, I think it's relevant," Shigeru said, a wicked glisten in her eye. "Do you know what your company lacks, oba-sama? Besides the oil holdings you desperately tried to get at through me, that is," she couldn't help adding slyly.
Shigeru smiled cattily. "Perspective," she said.
"I beg your pardon?" Kaede asked.
"Consider the Prince of Wales," Shigeru went on. "Not particularly well-liked, rather distanced from the population. Rather ineffective as a figurehead, really. But what was the turning point then? When he found a girl with no ties to the royal house, someone simple but beautiful in her simplicity, and began to woo her with everything he had.
"Of course, the problem there was that Diana became more popular than Prince Charles did," she sighed, grinning. "But I suppose that's the risk you run as royalty. You can stay happy with the familiar faces of the royal court and be liked for what you are instead of who you are. Or you can do something that will make the world frown on you. But in the case the world accepts, those who frown on you will be the bigger fools in the public eye.
"And the bigger fool, obasama, is what I think you run the risk of becoming."
Kaede leaned over the table, glaring. "You talk a good deal, young O'okawahara-san. But do you think I truly believe this is part of some sort of executive training?"
Shigeru's eyes widened. "I'm sorry?"
The woman's brow furrowed in disgust. "I know what you are trying to say," she said in a contemptuous voice, a fist under the table tightening, red nails cutting into flesh. "You are talking about my son and Makino Tsukushi, aren't you?"
"Makino..." When he finally caught his runaway breath, he clutched her tight, buried a hand in her hair, whispered her name. "How on earth did you get here?"
"I wanted to see you," she said simply.
The hot pressure of his hands on her back, her hair, ever-strengthened. "Are you okay? Are you safe? Did they do anything to you?" he questioned repeatedly.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she whispered.
"I'd have killed them all if they'd dared touch you," he growled.
"Doumyouji..." she laughed lightly. "Don't get violent without a reason."
"I did nothing but think about you," he said, the passionate growl still in his voice.
"Liar."
"What was that!?" For the first time since he'd first grabbed her, he broke the embrace and held her at arm's length. His frown was nearly a pout in its intensity, and Tsukushi felt like laughing at it.
"What was what?" she couldn't help countering. "You lied, so I called you a liar."
"It's not a lie!" he insisted.
"Aha, is that so?" she laughed. "Mister Executive Training."
He sucked in a breath. "You knew?"
Her eyes lowered. "For a while... I kind of thought you had... chosen the company over me," she admitted, her voice shaking more than she'd intended.
For a long moment, Tsukasa forgot to exhale. "What?" he finally said, and his hands on her shoulders tightened like vises. She winced a little with the pressure of it.
His temper rose like the fur on a cat's back, and he hissed like a jungle beast cornered in its own den. "What the hell are you talking about?" he raged. "Don't talk like that!"
"But..." Tsukushi found that at saying those words out loud, her eyes had begun to tear. Perhaps the insecurities had not withered away entirely. Her voice faltered.
"You're goddamned dumb!" Tsukasa went on, his voice growing ever more savage. "Without you that's all meaningless! It doesn't matter what I do, Makino," he shouted, his voice coming to a ruthless climax in its intensity, "no matter what, I still need you!!"
In answer, Tsukushi raised one of her hands and loosened his grip on her shoulders by slipping her hand over his. She drew his hands away, interlacing her fingers with his as he stared mutely. Hands clasping his, she looked into his eyes. "Thank you," she said simply, smiling. "I think... I needed to hear that."
Tsukasa's red-faced anger turned quickly into heart-pounding embarrassment. "Makino..."
"It's okay now," she said in a weakening voice. All the tension and nervousness she'd felt in the steps leading up to this reunion finally overwhelmed her, and she trembled and collapsed against him, eyes rolling towards the ceiling and sliding shut. "It's all right now, Doumyouji..." she whispered, devoid of strength, all her defenses down for the count. Here, with him, after so many days of being proud and strong, she could finally let someone else support her. She leaned on him in body and in soul.
"Ma...kino..." Tsukasa's arms rose up to encircle her. Somehow she was all flushed and fluttering under his grasp, head drowsily dropped against his chest. The most powerful woman he'd ever known had exhausted her strength, and she was looking to him to lend her some. To HIM! He felt like the strongest man alive. And in that moment, she...
...was more fragile and beautiful than a butterfly and how he longed to lay her down and spread her butterfly wings, to hold her and touch her in every way and...
He shook his head forcefully and forced those thoughts away. They were for another time, another place, somewhere when they were free to be themselves. Not here in this house of a demon where they had just been reunited. Arms wrapped tight around her, he rested his head on hers. "I missed you," he whispered.
"Me too." Her voice was just the barest shred of a whisper, but with the line of her jaw pressed against his body, he could hear her words just the same. "C...can we stay like this for a little while longer?"
He breathed in deeply and touched his lips to her hair. "As long as you want, Makino. Forever, if you want."
Her response was just, "I'm glad."
"Oh, not really," Shigeru said flippantly. "I think Tsukushi can do better than Tsukasa, personally."
This hit Kaede between the eyes, and she visibly shook with the absurdity of it. "Excuse me?" Her voice nearly-- not quite-- stuttered.
"She can do better," Shigeru smiled. "What I'm talking about, oba-sama, is the company's outlook. In any case-"
"And exactly what," Kaede interrupted, "are you implying by that remark?" She scowled darkly.
"Eh?" Shigeru stopped in mid-rant, and sighed wearily. "You're not going to let this go, are you? Oh well, I might as well explain myself." She allowed herself the luxury of an inner cheer-- she'd actually get to tell this woman something about the way she was ruining poor Tsukasa's life! Hooray!
"You see, Tsukushi's a great woman. Smart, pretty, popular, has a good head on her shoulders. But what's Tsukasa? That moron has his whole life decided for him. Even if he was smart-- which he's not-- he never gets a chance to show it, with everything always forced on him or served to him on a silver platter. He can't keep up with a girl like Tsukushi. Not on his life!"
"So you're saying my son is incapable of making decisions?" Kaede retorted.
"Well, that's the thing!" Shigeru took a deep gulp of tea and swallowed it uncermoniously. "Even if he could, he never gets to. So how would I know?
"But hey," she continued quickly, not allowing Kaede to react to the jab, "there's no accounting for taste. Though honestly if I were Tsukushi I'd seek out greener pastures. I honestly don't know what she's doing wasting her time trying to see him, but..."
At that, a flash of recognition flew through Kaede's eyes.
Shigeru fell silent almost immediately. Even with the gift of gab she'd been displaying, she knew there was no mistaking what she'd just said. No taking it back.
Kaede rose to her feet. Her eyes flashed icy fire. "I see." They were the only two words she had to say.
Shigeru gulped.
::DAMN!::
Tsukasa was working hard on some papers when the maid came in. "Pardon me, young master," she said in a muted voice, and began to clean. Tsukasa's shoulders stirred slightly, but other than that, he didn't respond to the appearance of the woman behind him.
She sprayed some liquid onto a dustrag and began to work. "Can you really do work in a place as dusty as this?" she murmured not-quite under her breath. He didn't respond, and she went on, putting an odd emphasis on her words. "I mean, for a weed like myself, I wouldn't have any other choice, but..."
At the sound of the word "weed," Tsukasa turned a little. The maid averted her eyes quickly. "Oh, I'm sorry, young master." she apologized. "Forgive me for interrupting your work. I'll be quieter."
Half-turned but still unable to see her face, Tsukasa remained frozen a moment. A sound moved from the back of his throat into the air. "Ma--"
"Maids aren't supposed to speak, I know," the maid interrupted hastily. "And Tama-senpai told me I must act like a perfect maid. Otherwise," she added meaningfully, "I'll be caught on camera and that will be the end of me. Do you know what I mean, young master?"
Tsukasa turned his back to her again and rose to his feet. "...Yeah," he said slowly. "But keep talking. Just so I know you're still here."
If he'd been facing her, Tsukasa would have seen a grin of delight cross the young girl's face. "All right... but what should I talk about? Now that you've asked me to talk, I can't think of a thing to say..."
"Anything's good," said Tsukasa, a pensive, musing tone to his voice. "Tell me a story or something." He had crossed the room to the mantle and was carefully rearranging the items that stood there, huddling them in a tight group.
The maid knelt and began polishing the floors with long, earnest strokes. "A story.... all right then," she said softly. "Once upon a time, there was a prince who lived in his castle. And he decided one of the common people should be his princess."
"I was thinking the other day," Shigeru commented lightly as she stirred her tea, "about Princess Diana."
"Diana?" Kaede was still wary. Although she had sat down at the table opposite the young girl, she was still not sure what she had in store... and being spoken to so cattily by a member of her children's generation was somewhat irritating. Still, the O'okawahara Group was an important connection, and if she ever wanted to get her hands on those oil holdings, she had to play nicely.
"What a shame, what happened to her," the blonde sighed. "Don't you agree, ma'am? That fame should be her undoing. But I suppose once you leave a normal life, you can never return to it."
"She had a good amount to be thankful for," Kaede snorted. "If she chose to throw that away, it was her own waste. But I fail to see how this connects with my reason for being here, O'okawahara-san. Have you got something to say that's relevant?"
Tsukasa had walked about the room several times, throwing his coat across the back of a sofa, fixing the hands of a grandfather clock to the wrong time, opening and closing various closet doors in a steady rhythm. Meanwhile, the maid had continued her story, and her voice had lost its sickly sweet lilt in the telling and become a much truer, rounder tone.
"The girl he chose would have rather lived on a farm than in a castle. But the prince was determined to make her his, and so he captured her and locked her in a tower. She tried to escape so many times, even though she had everything she could ever wish for in the fancy rooms of the palace. The prince visited her every day to talk to her and make sure she was happy, but she wasn't, and he didn't understand why.
"Finally he gave up and let her go," the maid said softly. "And the girl was happy as she always was, and free, but she found herself lacking something. Then she realized that the one thing she truly missed was the prince. All the things he'd offered her meant nothing, but seeing his face every day and talking to him had become something precious to her. So even if the prince had let her go," she said softly, "she found she couldn't let him go. So back to the palace she went... just to see him again."
The silence after her words seemed long and pronounced. Tsukasa was kneeling on the floor examining the pipes running from the walls to the heating vents, the maid still scrubbing the floor just in back of him. For a long moment, nothing seemed to move or even breathe in the room.
"Can I see that rag a moment?" Tsukasa asked.
"Huh?" The maid was surprised. "Sure..." She stretched forward to pass it over his shoulder. With a single, deft movement, he draped it over the mouth of one of the heating pipes.
"That should do it," he said.
And he reached back.
His whole body turning, in one movement, he grabbed the maid's wrist - pulled her in to meet him - a hand on her waist - supporting her - her body going limp - the warmth of his arms - the strength of his muscles - so tense - oh god it felt like it had been so long --
two sets of eyes meeting for just a moment, just a flash of recognition, a confirmation -
and oh how he kissed her then - his lips - his breath - his hands holding her whole body so close, ever closer, closer, like he never wanted to be even a breath away from her ever again... her hands found their way into his hair... her eyes welled with tears.... but not tears of fear, tears of joy and relief ... and how well she kissed him back...!
"How did you..?" he began to say.
"Shh, kiss me more," she begged. And he did.
"Oh, I think it's relevant," Shigeru said, a wicked glisten in her eye. "Do you know what your company lacks, oba-sama? Besides the oil holdings you desperately tried to get at through me, that is," she couldn't help adding slyly.
Shigeru smiled cattily. "Perspective," she said.
"I beg your pardon?" Kaede asked.
"Consider the Prince of Wales," Shigeru went on. "Not particularly well-liked, rather distanced from the population. Rather ineffective as a figurehead, really. But what was the turning point then? When he found a girl with no ties to the royal house, someone simple but beautiful in her simplicity, and began to woo her with everything he had.
"Of course, the problem there was that Diana became more popular than Prince Charles did," she sighed, grinning. "But I suppose that's the risk you run as royalty. You can stay happy with the familiar faces of the royal court and be liked for what you are instead of who you are. Or you can do something that will make the world frown on you. But in the case the world accepts, those who frown on you will be the bigger fools in the public eye.
"And the bigger fool, obasama, is what I think you run the risk of becoming."
Kaede leaned over the table, glaring. "You talk a good deal, young O'okawahara-san. But do you think I truly believe this is part of some sort of executive training?"
Shigeru's eyes widened. "I'm sorry?"
The woman's brow furrowed in disgust. "I know what you are trying to say," she said in a contemptuous voice, a fist under the table tightening, red nails cutting into flesh. "You are talking about my son and Makino Tsukushi, aren't you?"
"Makino..." When he finally caught his runaway breath, he clutched her tight, buried a hand in her hair, whispered her name. "How on earth did you get here?"
"I wanted to see you," she said simply.
The hot pressure of his hands on her back, her hair, ever-strengthened. "Are you okay? Are you safe? Did they do anything to you?" he questioned repeatedly.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she whispered.
"I'd have killed them all if they'd dared touch you," he growled.
"Doumyouji..." she laughed lightly. "Don't get violent without a reason."
"I did nothing but think about you," he said, the passionate growl still in his voice.
"Liar."
"What was that!?" For the first time since he'd first grabbed her, he broke the embrace and held her at arm's length. His frown was nearly a pout in its intensity, and Tsukushi felt like laughing at it.
"What was what?" she couldn't help countering. "You lied, so I called you a liar."
"It's not a lie!" he insisted.
"Aha, is that so?" she laughed. "Mister Executive Training."
He sucked in a breath. "You knew?"
Her eyes lowered. "For a while... I kind of thought you had... chosen the company over me," she admitted, her voice shaking more than she'd intended.
For a long moment, Tsukasa forgot to exhale. "What?" he finally said, and his hands on her shoulders tightened like vises. She winced a little with the pressure of it.
His temper rose like the fur on a cat's back, and he hissed like a jungle beast cornered in its own den. "What the hell are you talking about?" he raged. "Don't talk like that!"
"But..." Tsukushi found that at saying those words out loud, her eyes had begun to tear. Perhaps the insecurities had not withered away entirely. Her voice faltered.
"You're goddamned dumb!" Tsukasa went on, his voice growing ever more savage. "Without you that's all meaningless! It doesn't matter what I do, Makino," he shouted, his voice coming to a ruthless climax in its intensity, "no matter what, I still need you!!"
In answer, Tsukushi raised one of her hands and loosened his grip on her shoulders by slipping her hand over his. She drew his hands away, interlacing her fingers with his as he stared mutely. Hands clasping his, she looked into his eyes. "Thank you," she said simply, smiling. "I think... I needed to hear that."
Tsukasa's red-faced anger turned quickly into heart-pounding embarrassment. "Makino..."
"It's okay now," she said in a weakening voice. All the tension and nervousness she'd felt in the steps leading up to this reunion finally overwhelmed her, and she trembled and collapsed against him, eyes rolling towards the ceiling and sliding shut. "It's all right now, Doumyouji..." she whispered, devoid of strength, all her defenses down for the count. Here, with him, after so many days of being proud and strong, she could finally let someone else support her. She leaned on him in body and in soul.
"Ma...kino..." Tsukasa's arms rose up to encircle her. Somehow she was all flushed and fluttering under his grasp, head drowsily dropped against his chest. The most powerful woman he'd ever known had exhausted her strength, and she was looking to him to lend her some. To HIM! He felt like the strongest man alive. And in that moment, she...
...was more fragile and beautiful than a butterfly and how he longed to lay her down and spread her butterfly wings, to hold her and touch her in every way and...
He shook his head forcefully and forced those thoughts away. They were for another time, another place, somewhere when they were free to be themselves. Not here in this house of a demon where they had just been reunited. Arms wrapped tight around her, he rested his head on hers. "I missed you," he whispered.
"Me too." Her voice was just the barest shred of a whisper, but with the line of her jaw pressed against his body, he could hear her words just the same. "C...can we stay like this for a little while longer?"
He breathed in deeply and touched his lips to her hair. "As long as you want, Makino. Forever, if you want."
Her response was just, "I'm glad."
"Oh, not really," Shigeru said flippantly. "I think Tsukushi can do better than Tsukasa, personally."
This hit Kaede between the eyes, and she visibly shook with the absurdity of it. "Excuse me?" Her voice nearly-- not quite-- stuttered.
"She can do better," Shigeru smiled. "What I'm talking about, oba-sama, is the company's outlook. In any case-"
"And exactly what," Kaede interrupted, "are you implying by that remark?" She scowled darkly.
"Eh?" Shigeru stopped in mid-rant, and sighed wearily. "You're not going to let this go, are you? Oh well, I might as well explain myself." She allowed herself the luxury of an inner cheer-- she'd actually get to tell this woman something about the way she was ruining poor Tsukasa's life! Hooray!
"You see, Tsukushi's a great woman. Smart, pretty, popular, has a good head on her shoulders. But what's Tsukasa? That moron has his whole life decided for him. Even if he was smart-- which he's not-- he never gets a chance to show it, with everything always forced on him or served to him on a silver platter. He can't keep up with a girl like Tsukushi. Not on his life!"
"So you're saying my son is incapable of making decisions?" Kaede retorted.
"Well, that's the thing!" Shigeru took a deep gulp of tea and swallowed it uncermoniously. "Even if he could, he never gets to. So how would I know?
"But hey," she continued quickly, not allowing Kaede to react to the jab, "there's no accounting for taste. Though honestly if I were Tsukushi I'd seek out greener pastures. I honestly don't know what she's doing wasting her time trying to see him, but..."
At that, a flash of recognition flew through Kaede's eyes.
Shigeru fell silent almost immediately. Even with the gift of gab she'd been displaying, she knew there was no mistaking what she'd just said. No taking it back.
Kaede rose to her feet. Her eyes flashed icy fire. "I see." They were the only two words she had to say.
Shigeru gulped.
::DAMN!::