Once in a Lifetime

see disclaimer in Part 1

Colin Byrne's apartment was as neat, bland, and faceless as the man himself. There were few personal items anywhere--just necessities, like a plain, ordinary bed with striped sheets, and a plain white refrigerator, and plain wooden sitting and eating tables, and plain beige carpeting, and plain off-white tiles, and plain patterned linoleum. Plain plain plain.

Colin Byrne himself was out running errands, so Lisa Heartbreaker had the house to herself. She was feeling slightly ill again, and owned very little "decent" clothing, so she had declined his offer to join him. Instead, she wanted to get used to this anonymous place that smelled faintly of cleaning solutions where she would now live.

Lounging naked on the bed, Lisa stared up at the ceiling fan. Even it lacked personality--it was as boring and unoriginal as any fan she'd ever seen. Even if nothing else could be said for it, however, the bed was certainly soft.

Gently, almost hesitantly, Lisa laid one hand on her bare lower belly. With one look, you couldn't tell the difference, but she knew her body. There was a tightness, a fullness, here that she couldn't mistake. Unlike other women, her abdomen never swelled during menstruation--there was only the explanation she already knew.

It still didn't feel quite real. Lisa Pacifist would've been terrified, but at the same time up on cloud nine. Kaze... she wasn't sure. Idly, she wondered how he would've reacted if she could've told him.

Another woman might have been afraid that he would desert her at the inconvenience, but Lisa knew better. Kaze could be selfish at times, but he had a strong sense of responsibility, and they had loved each other. All the same, considering his taciturn nature... fatherhood would have completely bewildered him. The mental image of him trying to help her care for a baby almost made her smile.

When she was plagued with illness, he would've done his best to care for her. He'd have dealt with her moods; she would have been able to draw on his strength when hers wavered. If Kaze had lived, her pregnancy would've been heaven instead of hell...

Rolling onto her side, Lisa buried her face in the slightly rumpled comforter, breathing in its bland, vaguely spearmint scent. Closing her eyes, she willed her thoughts into blankness even as her mind slipped into dreams.

---

Their lovemaking was over; she lay sprawled over him as he rested on his back, her head on his chest. She'd grown used to the absence of a heartbeat there, and simply listened to the rhythm of his breathing as his ribcage shifted beneath her.

Sleepy and sated, she smiled dreamily as he laid a hand on her bare shoulderblades. Tired though she was, she was still perfectly aware of his body beneath hers. Merely half an hour before, they had taken an unusual amount of time in their foreplay, making a game of removing each other's clothing, indulging in the luxury of exploring each other with roving fingertips before the primal dive of flesh into flesh. She wouldn't soon forget the flicker of wonder, of coyness as she'd let her hands roam further and further down, at the strange stiffness of the skin there. His own fingers had circled her navel and traced the line down to her groin, had teased the coarse curls of her pubic hair before he'd pulled away and kissed her, hand on her hip, listening to her faint moans of ecstasy. He had taken her then, gentle and savage as their very first night, and given her the depths of himself, riding hard until he emptied.

It had been perfect.

She didn't know whether or not he was asleep, but she lightly kissed the smooth, perspiration-moist skin of his tanned chest, and murmured her gratitude.

Lying with his temporarily silenced need against her, she awaited his moment of awakening, when he would surely need her again, but was content in the quiet of the night to simply lie with him, to relish the brief peace of their momentary satisfaction.

It might not last, but it was enough for now, and that was what mattered.

---

"Wake up."

Opening one dull umber eye, Lisa glared balefully at the blurry face of Colin Byrne. He'd been shaking her shoulder, but she'd ignored it in favor of her dream. Men always had to ruin things.

"I got you some new clothes while I was out. That Fuuko woman gave me your sizes before we left, so..."

Awkwardly, he placed a bag on the bed next to her, and left, closing the door behind him.

Sitting up and giving the spot where the gaijin had retreated another resentful look, Lisa reluctantly dumped the contents of the bag out before her. Rifling through the stack of clothing, she was forced to admit that Colin Byrne had good taste. There were white and cream blouses, dark blue and green skirts, even a two-piece outfit with stiff cloth decorated in a tiny, black-and-white houndstooth check. Staring warily at the label on the inside of the collar, Lisa vaguely recognized the brand name as a designer outlet.

Among the other clothes were strewn a few packages of white cotton panties. Lisa Pacifist might've wept with relief. No more fetish or bondage wear, no more silk and lace so heavily stained that they were no longer their original colors anywhere--plain white panties. And none had any more ornamentation than tiny satin bows fixed to the waistband.

And another surprise--plain, maternity-style underwire bras. Two of them, in size DD--a far cry from the F-cups Lisa had once been forced into. She'd lost a lot of weight; she was lucky that she didn't have any real trouble with sagging skin. But it was still a tiny blessing to have smaller breasts... it had been a source of teenage humiliation for her, while she was still in school.

Nothing orange. Lisa was glad of it. It had once been her favorite color, but not anymore. She'd been wearing her orange dress the first time Kaze had taken her clothes off--she would never wear that color again.

With a mild sigh, she ripped tags off and put on some of everything. The sizes were all perfect... small wonder; Fuuko had gotten all of Lisa's clothes back at the nightclub, and they'd all fit, too. If Fuuko had indeed given Colin Byrne her measurements, she wasn't surprised that the clothes were the right size.

Just leaving the rest of the clothes the gaijin had bought on the rumpled bed, Lisa opened the door and headed into the main room.

Colin Byrne himself was sitting on the couch, and patted the cushion beside him like he wanted her to sit with him. She stayed standing.

"It's raining," he said with a smile on his indistinct face. "Listen."

In the silence, Lisa could hear the faint patter of raindrops on the walls. It was a hollow, lonely, all-encompassing blanket of sound; if Lisa closed her eyes, she could almost believe that it was the same rain that had fallen on her family home so long ago--

A small frown creased her lips, and opening her eyes again, Lisa headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Colin Byrne asked, confounded and apparently a little angry.

"Out," Lisa said impassively.

"Why?"

"To walk."

Colin Byrne was silent. It seemed as if he was trying to find a reason to refuse and keep her to himself. "You'll catch your death of cold."

Lisa shrugged. She doubted it, but if she did, she didn't really give a damn anyway.

Colin Byrne must have realized this, for he shook his head, made an irritated noise, and said, "At least take an umbrella with you."

---

The streets of Sadogashima, with their milling crowds of people, had been washed a dull gray by the rain; Lisa Heartbreaker found the gloom strangely comforting.

She had been walking aimlessly beneath Colin Byrne's sturdy black umbrella for some time when she at last stopped at a small coffee shop--making an order, she sat beneath the sculpted buttress of the building on a stone bench with her iced latte and lazily watched the passersby.

Crowds were interesting to watch. This one had the usual assortment of businessmen on their way home from work, harrassed-looking office ladies on errands, families, homeless, and ne'er-do-wells like her roaming back and forth pointlessly. Lisa rarely caught faces, and never heard snatches of conversation--these people were put in bad moods by the rain, and wanted to get out of it as soon as possible.

Lisa enjoyed the rain. The gentle wash of water droplets was soothing, and made a beautiful sound against stone and wood and fabric and pavement. Besides, she had always felt most attuned to water out of all the elements; its vast omnipresent spirit had been a buoy of strength to her in her worst times. It still would be; however, she'd been unable to make use of her connection to Kigen since Kaze's death. After the first few weeks of vulnerability, in which she'd felt like a thin sheet of plastic had been placed between her and everything else, she'd simply grown used to it.

Staring at the thickly clouded sky, Lisa suddenly found herself thinking about Makenshi.

He'd been a right enigma, that one. When she'd first seen him, he'd been an enemy with a horrifying amount of power--enough to knock out Kaze in one clean hit--and a threat to Ai and Yu, who she was having enough trouble taking care of as it was. Her first impression of him had been very bad indeed--he'd attacked the Comodeen, after all, and Kaze hated him with a passion.

He worked for the Earl, that was certain. But unlike the Earl's four lords, Fungus, Herba, Oscha, and Pist, he didn't seem to care much for wreaking havoc or causing pain. On the contrary, he had actually warned the Comodeen against going to war with the Earl, telling them that they hadn't the strength to win. And the Earl had no qualms about manipulating him, even putting him through hell itself, to further his own growth of power.

Most baffling of all was the fact that to Lisa, he didn't feel like a threat. His spirit had the same sad, gentle feel of a hazy sky, and his softspoken, gentle manner while speaking to Kaze had betrayed his true intentions the entire time. But it was only when he'd saved Kaze's life, then everyone else's, at the risk of his own, that everything had made sense. He was on their side, and had been from the beginning.

Although the dying Lisa Pacifist had wept and wept over Kaze's fate, one thing she had never admitted to anyone was that a few of her tears had been shed for Makenshi as well. She hadn't gotten to know him, but in the end, he had been so brave, sacrificing his life in order to give Kaze the chance to defeat Chaos at long last.

Every now and then, Lisa Heartbreaker still woke from nightmares in which her mind replayed for her the horrific memory of how the Earl had speared Makenshi on his own sword.

They were almost as bad as the dreams of Kaze's sacrifice.

And while both of them had died, Lisa had just watched, too weak to be of any use at all.

She sighed, cut herself off to keep from thinking any more about it, and sipped at her coffee.

"My, how far you've fallen... Risa Hatsufiist..."

Lisa almost dropped her latte out of pure shock. She'd told no one in Japan that name once she'd crossed over from the mainland. So who...?

She turned to face the black-swathed girl who glared down at her out of cool, almost apathic silver eyes.