Twilight Bastille Chapter 12: Changing Landscape, a sailor moon fanfic

Sailormoon is not mine.

…

Twilight Bastille: Chapter #12 – Changing Landscape

…

Jacen could tell that it was already late morning, perhaps even noon as he awoke. Strong midday light poured through the windows into his spare, clean quarters. He glanced down at the dark head mashed against his chest, her warm breath raising tiny goosebumps on his flesh. He shifted slightly as he felt her sleek calves tangled between his knees, and she stirred immediately, lifting her heavy-lashed eyes to meet his. Their gazes locked, and then Rei yawned unabashedly, like a sated housecat, her fingertips rising to just barely cover her small, pearl-sharp teeth.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Not long. A minute, maybe."

Rei dragged her fingernails lightly over his stubbled chin. "Were you watching me just now?"

His irises deepened, piercing blue. "What do you think?"

She looked down then, and there was silence. A few moments passed before Rei broke the stillness, reaching up to him. She pressed her lips to his left collarbone, hard, almost painful, and heard his sharp intake of breath. With that, Rei rose with quick, easy grace from his arms. The wood floor was warm beneath her feet as she walked to the washroom, fully aware of his eyes riveted to her nude form. Jacen propped himself up on his elbows, watching the unconscious dip and sway of her slim, pale hips.

Rei scrubbed her face and mouth quickly over the sink as the tub filled behind her. As she turned off the faucet, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Ironic how well-rested I look, isn't it, she thought wryly.

She made liberal use of his soap and shampoo, wincing as her fingers caught in tangled hair. His towels were equally fair game, and Rei used two just for her hair, which smelled of his spicy, leathery soap. Jacen was still in the same position she'd left him in, leaning on his elbows, one eyebrow quizzically arched as she emerged from his bathroom as clothed as she'd stepped in it.

"Do you usually walk around your own rooms naked as the day you were born?"

"No," she replied flippantly, sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing the dripping ends of her hair between two towels.

"I'll need some curtains so the guards outside don't get a peek at what they're missing – "

"You're asking me stupid questions," Rei cut in, throwing him an irritated glance. "Why should I bother with clothes if you've already seen everything? Next time I'll just – "

Jacen interrupted her with a short laugh, tugging at her wet mane so that she fell beside him with a soft thud. "I'm only teasing, Rei. Seems to work on everybody else but you."

"Am I everybody else?" she asked lightly, good humor restored.

The change in his tone was subtle, but they both heard it nonetheless.

"No. No, you're not."

There was a brief, tense pause before Rei rolled over, closer to him, elbows resting upon his chest and mouth tense with worry. "Jacen…"

"You should go," he said flatly, staring upward at the ceiling, somewhere past her. "Now, while everybody's probably having lunch in the mess hall. Nobody will notice you. Or gossip."

"I don't care about gossip. Do you? Look at me, Jacen."

Rei had thought he was afraid to look at her for some inexplicable reason, had thought he would hesitate. He proved her wrong, instantly turning his intent gaze upon her, and she saw what was in his eyes. Whatever Rei had meant to say died immediately in her throat. She felt very small, a moth caught in stifling amber, terrified, but unable to look away. He took both of her slender wrists in one hand and pressed them to his chest, and they both felt the jump of his heartbeat, her palms cool against his skin.

"No, I don't give a damn about gossip. I'm used to it. Nonetheless," his voice sounded unnaturally quiet with the roaring in her ears, "you should go."

He released her black strands from his other fist; she hadn't even noticed that Jacen held them until he let them go. She rose from the bed, eyes averted, unusually hasty in her movements, struggling to pull on her wrinkled clothes and twist her hair into a hasty coil. Rei's voice trembled as she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her housecoat. "Look…I don't think I can give you what you want, Jacen."

"Then think again, pigeon, and be careful. You may have already given me more than you wanted." His tone, by comparison, was measured.

Rei's footsteps out the door were hurried and loud, but still he could hear the tearful catch in her breath at his words. Jacen waited until all sound of her was muted by sand and baying wind, and then he rose. She hadn't slept in his bed long enough to leave her smoke-sweet scent, but he suspected that would soon change.

…

Jacen was right. There was nobody wandering about at noon; they were probably all chattering away in the mess hall line. It being Sunday, some were perhaps still at the chapel. Rei made her way back to her own barracks in peace, although her thoughts were in the same turmoil that they seemed to have always been, ever since the good doctor had arrived. Sleeping with him had not resolved any of her emotional confusion, and in truth, she hadn't expected it to.

The moment she set foot in her room, Grandfather's familiar, comforting scent surrounded her, thudding a dull pain in her chest that Rei couldn't imagine would ever leave her. It would soften to a murmur over time, but she knew all too well about grief. It was persistent, now as much a part of her as hands and feet. Grandfather would have said it was just as essential, too. Grief is the black shadow of memory. And Rei would not surrender a single memory of him, no matter how hurtful.

Jacen's words of last night had been harsh, but true. She couldn't run from the things that lurked inside her forever. Rei's formidable intuition had always been a double-edged sword – the things she could see with such clarity, she knew she could deny with equal stubbornness. With the unerring eye of a surgeon, of a lover, Jacen saw the ugly things within her, the secrets she attempted to keep, the thoughts she spoke not even to herself; he pulled away what seemed to expose what was. It frightened her to think that Jacen saw her so clearly, that in mere months he knew things about her flawed nature that had taken Grandfather fifteen years to discover, that her father had never bothered to find out. It scared the hell out of Rei, and yet at the same time it pleased her, made her smile.

She was unsure of how to interpret his words of only a few minutes before. You may have already given me more than you wanted? She knew that Jacen fancied himself in love with her. Rei did not think he gave his heart easily, but she also did not think she could ever give hers. She had hoped that was clear. In some ways, she felt older than Jacen, despite the years between them. In nineteen years, Rei had already lost too much. She knew she could not stand to have him, and then lose him too.

"I'll be waiting," he'd said to her. "I'm not going anywhere."

Although…it would be a simple thing, so easy to let him protect her and adore her, to blunt the pain of their mutual wound.

It would be so easy, Rei had to admit, to fall in love.

…

For the past several years, Rei's life had been guided by routine. Some days were easy; all days in recent memory had been impossibly difficult, but they were all dully methodical nonetheless, with chores to finish, work to do, documents to deal with. Now, her life settled into a new routine, but this one she savored because she never knew when it would end. Her days were spent working as a classroom assistant, just as before; Jacen simply forbade her from taking on her grandfather's tasks as well. Working less and eating more, Rei began to regain some of the weight she'd lost over the last month. She kept her barracks clean, just as always, and in her spare time she borrowed books or meditated, honing that strange prescience that Grandfather always insisted she inherited from her grandmother. Rei never forgot to offer prayers for him and her mother. At night, she folded the next day's working clothes and walked to Jacen's barracks.

The door was usually unlocked, and there was always a glass of water for her and a small whiskey for him, both completely ignored because the first thing they would do was make love with a feral desperation that startled both of them. Jacen, of course, had the benefit of experience, but Rei was an eager student, and as the weeks passed, their need for each other only seemed to intensify, to the point where their nights weren't enough and they stole short minutes from the day. Unsurprisingly, Jacen was bolder than she, deliberately running his fingers through her hair, loosening pins and dragging it into the wind as he passed her by at work. Most of the giggling students noticed, as did the white-haired school manager, who clucked her tongue disapprovingly at "the Jap girl's bad manners". Rei frequently brought the smallest children into the hospital for minor playground injuries. They were utterly obvious to the medical staff, the doctor's gaze burning into her skin, the girl's smile demure.

Neither Jacen nor Rei particularly cared who knew and who didn't, but the "secret" distracted them from their mutual loss of only a few weeks before. Such amusements were only a salve; nonetheless, they ameliorated a slowly healing wound. There were frequent occasions that Rei jerked from sleep with a piercing cry, a name that would be nowhere but in her memories, tears dripping salt onto her lips, and Jacen could do nothing but hold her and feel the wet rattle of her breath against his throat, ugly, wrenching sobs that she trusted him to keep secret. He wrapped his palm around the base of her skull, fingers massaging the pressure point until she fell into fitful sleep. And then Jacen lay awake, staring out his window at the barren desert, wondering again and again what he could have done better.

…

It was in the first week or two of September that Rei walked back to her rooms and found a small envelope at her doorstep. There was nothing written on the front save for her name and barracks number in neat cursive. Alarmed, she ripped off the seal.

To Miss Hino Rei:

We respectfully request your attendance at a private consultation this evening at Barracks #11 in order to discuss - lease be there by 5'o-clock.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Rei's lips pursed. They wanted a meeting to discuss what? An entire line had been purposefully blacked out so that she could not read it, and she was completely mystified as to why the camp administrators might want to speak with her. Unbidden, the acid of fear flooded Rei's mouth. Did they know? Would they ask her about her relationship with Jacen? They couldn't do that, could they? She had committed no crimes, broken no rules.

Had she?

…

Four-fifty-eight found Rei in a faded skirt and old abalone-button jacket, mane shellacked into fussy pin curls, waiting in the office at Barracks #11. She'd never been here during her years at Manzanar. There had been troublemakers and rebels sitting in this seat before her, but she'd not been one of them. Rei shifted nervously, the chair's tweed upholstery scratching insistently at her stockinged leg. Exactly one minute after five, Rei heard footsteps briskly coming down the hall, and she looked up to see a tall, chestnut-haired man purposefully enter the room, cordovan briefcase in hand. He was in his mid-thirties, perhaps, despite a boyishly shaggy haircut, and his suit looked expensive, shoes mirror-shined. She stood, mouth dry but expression cool, and he doffed his hat, smiling.

"Chad Winters, ma'am. Miss Hino, if I'm not mistaken?"

"Yes," Rei said as calmly as she could manage, "and it's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Winters. May I be so forward as to ask what the purpose of this meeting is?"

He laughed genially. "I like that. Of course you may. It's a bit of a sensitive issue, actually, so let's close the door – " Mr. Winters did so, further disrupting Rei's peace of mind, " – it concerns your late father's assets and how – "

"Wait," Rei interrupted him, her relief at not being questioned about Jacen instantly tempered by cold, numbing shock. "My father? What's happened to him? Where is he?"

Mr. Winters was staring at her with no small amount of surprise. "You weren't made aware of your father's passing? Assistant Chairman Yutaka Hino was killed in an Allied air raid in Nagoya…some months ago. It was all over the newspapers, so many prominent figures in the old Japanese administration, all gone in one building…Miss Hino, I do apologize…you didn't know?"

"No," Rei said. "No, I hadn't heard."

…

The rest of the meeting passed in a blur; specific details and words of their conversation were completely lost to Rei's recollection. Her father had so long been a faraway specter, a faceless frustration, that it was impossible for her to dredge up any sort of sincere sorrow beyond what she had felt at Grandfather's passing. She was wrung out, dry of emotion, and couldn't spare any more. Regardless, Mr. Winters had gotten across that the chairman's death, while part of a distant battle in a more distant land, would change her landscape considerably.

"He wrote no formal will, so naturally all of his 'friends' and political allies emerged from nowhere, looking for their piece of the pie. His assistant Kaidou couldn't save much real estate for you, but I get the sense you won't be returning to Japan for a while anyway. You've lost all your properties in Tokyo and also the summer home north of Kyoto. Nonetheless, I'd consider you lucky. Thanks to Kaidou's loyalty and forward thinking, a considerable amount of capital was set aside for the chairman's only heir, not long before his death. Hino was a man of significant means. You were forced to resell your ranch in the valley at a loss, just before coming to Manzanar, right? Miss Hino?"

Rei shook herself from her stupor. She couldn't help but feel a vague sense of pity; it figured that her father's so-called friends would only care to make an appearance when there was money involved. "Y-yes? That's where I used to live, Mr. Winters. I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, here."

"This changes your situation considerably, Miss Hino. Once the paperwork is taken care of…do you realize that you'll be able to buy your home back? To leave here for good?"

…