SAKURA TAISEN/WARS and all related characters, names and indicia are TM & © SEGA RED and are used here without permission.

REPOSTED due to typos and bad French dialect ;D

Rated PG-13, SHOUJO-AI WARNING (aka f/f)

To The Motherland

"Orange Blossom Soap"

There was nothing at all unusual about Maria missing breakfast.

But it was a half an hour past the usual meal time and Kanna had not yet appeared, which, Reni believed, was the first sign of the Apocolypse in several religions. The diminutive German exchanged a glance with Sakura, whose eyes were as legible as ever. She was also worried.

"You try the gym, I'll check her room," Reni said to her as they returned their teacups to the counter. Iris and Kohran were taking care fo the dishes. Orihime relieved Iris of her duty and threw a quick glance at Reni. Reni nodded once in acknowledgement of something undoubtedly regarding Kanna and feeling guilty, and then she and the swordswoman headed off in different directions.

But it was Iris who found her, and she hadn't even been looking. In recent years, Iris had become quite a competent swimmer, and she practiced most mornings after breakfast. Jean-Paul was a childhood memory, but her yellow-gold hair still hung in shining waves to her shoulders. She was tying it up, an elastic in her teeth, when she spotted Kanna, loitering restlessly in the windowless corridor which spanned the subterranean distance between the pool and the shooting range.

"Kanna? What--" A muffled crack drew the attention of both young women, and taught them that the firing range was currently in use. Doubtlessly by Maria. Iris turned back to Kanna. "What are you doing here? You missed breakfast."

"I did? I mean, uh… yeah. I did. I know. I, uh…"

"Are you waiting for Maria?" Iris finished rendering a ponytail and shoved her hands into the pockets of her white sweatpants. Her mint-green swimsuit was visible from the waist up, and her feet were bare.

"Uh, yeah. Makin' sure she eats, ya know?"

"Merci, mon ami," Iris smiled. "She had a nightmare again last night. This is two nights in a row, after so many years free of them."

"H-how do you know what happened to Maria last night?" Kanna grinned to cover the note of alarm in her voice.

Iris winked and tapped her temple with a manicured fingernail. "I have always had a way of knowing these things!" With that, Iris turned and pushed through the door to the pool.

It was just before Kanna heard the door to the shooting range open that she realized she hadn't heard a gunshot in a while. "Baka!" she whispered to herself and ducked into the nearest hiding place: the locker room that was between the pool and the range. And by doing so, she'd just successfully cornered herself. She harbored no false hopes that Maria was not headed here next. Kanna had been tailing her, unseen, all morning, and Maria had a routine. After nearly a decade of living under the same (albeit huge) roof, Kanna knew the routines of just about all the members of the Hanagumi, and Maria was the strictest creature of habit.

Iris' street clothes and toiletries were set neatly on a bench, presumably laid there before breakfast. Kanna cast around and slipped behind a row of wooden cabinets full of towels, washcloths, soaps, robes and mats.

She decided too late that this was a poor choice of hiding places. Before she could relocate, she heard the rhythmic tap of the heels of Maria's boots on the tile floor.

Kanna was trapped. The door into the locker room was clear on the other side. The sinks and mirrors, the lockers and counters and showers, and Maria, all stood between Kanna and escape.

Like cornered prey, Kanna listened. The metallic click of a buckle. The slither of leather over cotton, the solid, weighty thump of leather-sheathed metal onto the countertop, accompanied by the muffled clatter of molded leather and metal buckles. Well, at least now, if Maria caught her, Kanna knew she would be without her revolver.

Kanna chuckled inwardly as she found herself literally waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maria's boots clomped emptily to the tile floor. She heard Maria breathe a sigh and heard the old, loose wooden bench creak as she sat down on it. The sound of the movement of soft cloth followed, and then the padding of bare feet across tile, diminishing toward the three glass-doored shower stalls.

Hope of slipping out while Maria was showering was slim. Even if she turned the water hot enough to fog the glass of the door, she was still likely to see Kanna. Maria and Kanna were both head and shoulders taller than the glass doors on the shower stalls.

Well, why shouldn't I be in here, the redhead thought as she heard the sputtering hiss of water begin. This was, after all, a common shower room. Except Maria would wonder what Kanna had been doing so far, skulking around silently behind the cabinets. Besides, Maria wasn't exactly top on Kanna's list of people to see this morning - despite the fact that she'd been following the Russian since she woke up. She had to make sure Maria didn't run off or get jumped by a bunch of scary secret policemen.

But, by the same token, she wasn't ready to face Maria yet, either. Last night did not go precisely as Kanna had planned. Which wasn't the least bit surprising, considering that Kanna hadn't planned last night at all, and was still rather shocked at herself. Well, she had to do something to get Maria to make an emotional reaction.

Last night, after Kanna had embraced her, Maria had pulled herself together, firmly disentangled herself, turned her back and whispered, "Good night, Kanna," while smearing tears from her cheeks with the heel of her palm. Kanna had tried to set things back in order, but the markswoman's icy and distant whisper of "Please don't touch me again" had struck Kanna harder than one of Maria's bullets could have. She let herself out after an unacknowledged apology.

The splattering sounds of an obstructed water spray brought Kanna back to the present. Suddenly, the thought of Maria just around the corner in the shower had an utterly new connotation to it than it ever had before, and it made the Okinawan blush. She tried to ignore the familiar sounds, the dull clunk of a bar of soap being returned to its porcelain dish, the slick sound of water being smoothed out of short hair, the heavy, hollow sigh of as much relaxation as something as trivial as warm water could offer.

Then Kanna caught the scent. Maria's soap. Lilacs or lilies or powder, or all three. For years it had just been the way Maria Tachibana smelled. Now, for some reason, the same smell conjured something completely different. Now, it was the way Maria Tachibana's hair smelled against Kanna's cheek as she pressed the trembling markswoman's head to her supporting shoulder.

Orange blossom. That was it.

Good grief, Orihime was right…!

This thought was so distracting that Kanna didn't notice the absence of the sound of running water until she saw movement. The end cabinet stood open, barring Kanna's view of most of naked, wet Maria. Pale, water-beaded feet and ankles stood on tip-toe in a growing puddle of orange-blossom-scented water in front of the open closet door as Maria reached on a top shelf for something inside.

Oh god--

Maria must have opened the cabinet just as she rounded the corner. Obviously, she hadn't seen Kanna. Kanna flattened her back against the cabinets, keeping the open door between them, and held her breath. She was only an arm's length from Maria now.

And a cabinet door behind Kanna which had been slightly ajar thudded closed as she leaned on it.

Maria's cabinet door slammed closed, a large, unfurled bath towel clutched protectively against her breast, her eyes wide, brows furrowed. The edge of her towel trailed soppingly in the puddle at her feet.

"KANNA!" she hissed.

"Oh, uh, hey, Maria…" Kanna wiggled her fingers in greeting to the Russian whose face was flushed red from the hot shower, or from anger, or from embarrassment. Likely all of the foregoing.

"What are you doing?" Maria demanded.

Kanna's mind came to a rapid boil of ideas and possible lies, each as unlikely as the last, and finally she sighed, settling on the truth. "I was following you. I don't want any Russian secret police conking you on the head and running off with ya."

Maria's jaw tightened, her lips thin and white in fury. "They aren't going to kidnap me, Kanna."

"Yeah, well, I didn't want you running off to join them, either. And I was worried. I mean, I was gonna leave you alone, but… Iris said you been having nightmares."

Maria lowered her head, securing her towel around her, and made no answer.

And in that silence is when they heard the drip of water too near to them to be from the shower stalls.

The two women turned to find Iris standing just inside the locker room door, dripping from her swim, and ashen-faced from what she'd just overheard. "Russian… Secret… Police…?"

Maria closed her eyes and covered them with her hands.

"We have to tell Yoneda!" Iris whispered urgently from her seat on the wooden bench. A large bath towel was draped over her legs like a lap blanket. She was leaning forward toward Kanna in her desperation. Kanna was sitting across from Iris and had run both hands into her disorderly mop of red hair.

"We can't," Kanna said through gritted teeth.

"Why not!" Iris directed her panicked question to Maria, who was pacing back and forth across the tile, clad in a white terrycloth robe scavenged from the cabinet which had given away Kanna's hiding place. Her hair, unbrushed, had begun to dry in its own choice of clumps, twists and waves, a bedraggled condition in which Maria never allowed herself to be seen, if she could help it.

"You wouldn't understand," Maria whispered, still pacing.

"Since I never knew you when you were a child," Iris bristled, "if you ever were one, I am guessing you haven't noticed that I am not one any longer, either."

Maria halted, mid-pace. "You are right. I am sorry, Iris." The Russian turned to face the young Frenchwoman, sighing in contrition. "The more of you who know about it, the more of you who are in danger."

"We are in danger every day of our lives, Maria-san, when we are out there fighting th--"

"I have already had this discussion with Kanna," Maria interrupted in disgust. "Can I trust you two to keep my secret or no?"

"Some secrets aren't meant to be kept, Maria-san…" Iris said, suddenly gently. "How will you stop us from going to General Yoneda?"

For a long moment, she simply studied Iris. Maria seemed far less intimidating without a perfectly groomed swath of blonde hair curtaining her eyes from close inspection, without the triple rank ropes of gold draping from her epaulets, without her sharply pressed deep black uniform coat, without her well-worn-in leather shoulder holster and without the murky dark gleam of the metal of her Enfield revolver. Instead, Maria looked tired. Older. Defeated.

"I cannot stop you," she finally replied. "No more than you can stop me." And Maria began gathering her things from the bench.

"Wait! Maria!" Kanna lurched to her feet and grabbed Maria's thick-terrycloth-clad arm. "Please don't. Don't leave like this. Please. Let's just… let's wait. We won't go to Yoneda, I swear it. I promise." Kanna held up her right palm, open, in a vow. "Just… let's just think, for the afternoon, okay? Don't go anywhere. Meet us in the library before dinner and we'll figure something out. Okay, Maria? We won't tell, we swear." Iris nodded vehemently along with Kanna's declarations. "Okay?"

Maria looked from Kanna to Iris and back, studying both their sincere faces. Her two oldest friends, willing to risk their lives for her. She exhaled a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and her shoulders slumped. She nodded.

And lied to them.