Chapter 10
Desolation would just about cover it.
Ukyou watched the Princess Welcome dance with Prince Valiant, and felt her intestines turn to stone. They were so happy. So deliriously, ridiculously happy. Like her mother, and her father. Maybe one day one of them would go mad and grow some incestuous desires—like horns sticking out of their heads.
And maybe that one would be sorry when they sent their child away, and maybe the child could be called home safely, and maybe. . . maybe, maybe, maybe. . . they could be happy like that again.
Was it that simple? Welcome and Valiant had loved each other based on a mutual appraisal of the other's portraits. They had spoken no word to each other until they met, but long before that they were both willing to risk enchantment or death just to see each other. And there they were, delirious, drunk with love, dancing to a tune that faded hours ago, staring at each other without speaking.
She wondered, briefly, if she were going to be sick. No, her stomach wasn't heaving, it was simply retreating into the crevices of her spine.
Maybe, if she had the kind of flawless, pale perfect beauty Welcome possessed, such a miracle could happen to her, too. She knew for damn sure that it wasn't any particular virtue on the part of the girl that led her to be so loved, both by her parents and by Valiant.
Like Akane. Some people are just fated to be loved. Adored, admired, sought after, and imprisoned. And some people are fated to wander the earth alone, forgotten by the very people who were supposed to love them above all others.
Desolation, she reflected, would indeed just about cover it.
She stirred unsteadily, rising to her feet in pursuit of some more spirits to dull her own. She'd taken no more than three shaking steps before she ran into Becafica. Literally. He was carrying a drink in his hands, and he spilled it over the both of them.
"Merde," he swore, in a conversational sort of way. Instead of cursing further or blotting at the liquid soaking into his shirt, he drew Ukyou into a close embrace.
"Mon enfant, mon petite sange," he whispered, as Ukyou tried to push him off. Her arms felt heavy, sluggish with wine and fatigue.
"What sort of monkey garble are you spouting?" she hissed, breaking free at last. He took a closer look at her, then reared back, blinking furiously.
"Sorry," he grunted. "Thought you were someone else."
"I gathered," Ukyou replied, summoning as much dignity as she could, under the circumstances. "You shouldn't drink so much, it's making you speak in tongues."
"It's not a tongue, it's a language with a lot of tongues, is what it is, but I suppose being of a barbaric state like Kuonji, you'd not have heard it? Pity, pity, miss all the best poems, especially about that cheeky little Bellissima. . ." Becafica rambled.
"Jackass," Ukyou muttered, and made to move past him. He grabbed her arm, and she shook him off, but all he needed was another few seconds to make his point.
"News of your father," he said, almost jeering. She stopped, in every part of her. Her heart, her breath, her very soul. Maybe her father was dead. She felt like falling down and letting her own heart rupture, killing her, at the mere prospect. On the other hand, she probably couldn't go home until he was. On yet another hand: What is home without family?
His point, obviously, was that she needed him. The bastard.
"What news?" she asked.
"He is ailing. And mad, still. He is looking for you, my lady—but he thinks you are an escaped bride. He has forgotten completely that he has a daughter." The blood must have drained from her face, because he grinned maliciously. "Oui, mademoiselle—that's a bitch. To be forgotten. Shunned." He gestured toward the dancing couple, and threw himself on the floor in a miserable drunken stupor.
Ukyou narrowed her eyes at the young servant Becafica. There was something . . . broken about him. Something crushed. Something. . . that spoke of a shattered heart, and a shattered hope.
"What was it you said to me, in your damn fool language?" she asked, bending closer. For a moment, she thought he did not see her; his eyes were glassy and his breath dangerously shallow. But then he spoke, the words a whisper so low she almost didn't hear him. He spoke like a dying man, a man whose blood is lying in a puddle at his own feet.
"My child, my little monkey. I used to call him that." There was a pause, as his tongue flicked out to moisten his cracked lips. "But he chose her. He chose a stranger over me. He chose. . . a strange woman over me."
Ukyou opened her mouth to reply, but bit back her cruel retort. No matter how he had hurt her. . . he was suffering enough. Besides, the cruel retort that instantly sprang to her mind included the resemblance between his ears and cauliflower, so she thought it best she keep such things to herself.
She left the dying man to sit in the fumes of his drink, and went off in search of her own.
-
Amazingly enough, life seems to continue no matter what we do to stop it. Despite the wedding preparations at the Tendo castle, maids continued to scald themselves, guardsmen found themselves cursing at the complicated undergarments of laundresses behind pillars, and little pageboys continued to get into manure fights down by the stables.
The world continued. Excepting, of course, the world as seen by the bride. She was morose, withdrawn, a mere shadow of the gaily laughing girl from years past. And yet, no one noticed. The Princess began to have dreams that she was bleeding to death and no one noticed. She woke from them in a cold sweat, feeling the pain of the wounds. Once, she even lifted a small jeweled dagger she possessed—a gift from Ryouga—and considered testing the idea. Seeing if anyone would, indeed, notice if she were to wander around with a mortal wound.
However, she quickly came to realize that the maids troubled themselves with the times of her bowel movements, and it was unlikely to go unnoticed if she added a gaping hole.
She told herself it was natural for brides to get cold feet, and tried to go about her business. The fact remained, however, that she wasn't going to get the long, beautiful, devastating relationship her mother had with her father. And she wasn't going to get the kind of passionate love her oldest sister had found when she ran off with the miracle man. She was going to get. . . Ryouga. And she could only hope, realistically, that either he didn't mind being a cuckhold and she found a more. . . . focused lover, or he died early.
Both propositions sickened her. She vowed, quietly, in the dead of night, that she would never make Ryouga a cuckhold. And she vowed, furthermore, to refrain from beating him up—unless provoked.
She felt that was all she could do. She was getting married for protection, not love, and she could expect no better.
While she made this vow, and stared into her fire—warm and discontent—Ranma was snoring under the stars, resting from a day of running over hills and mountains. He was trying with all his might to reach her before her wedding. It did not, however, look as though he would make it.