ObviousMan: Perhaps I should restate that: I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing, but it seems to be working. I have no idea how long it will continue to do so. I do find your reaction encouraging, though.
Dracobolt: Thanks as always.
Vilya: Hey, haven't seen you in a while! Thanks.
End of Response Section4/2/05 People pay a lot of attention to Cold and Flu Season. Very few notice Cold and Allergy Season. Well, anyway, tell me if you think this chapter is too drawn out. I'm really starting to need to practice a lot of character manipulation and I'm not sure how obvious it is. It doesn't help that I can never be completely sure of my grip on Regal's pre-Alicia personality.
Disclaimer: Rallalon does not own Tales of Symphonia or any of its characters, places or items.
.-.-.-.-.-.
"Ali?"
Not now, not now after everything. How loud had she been to wake Melissa up? One more stupid thing to add to the list. She pretended she was asleep.
"Come on, Ali, I know you're awake."
She pretended harder, ignoring what was threatening to become a pounding headache.
"Ali, you- Why are you wearing your apron?"
...What? She'd... Right, she hadn't taken it off... before... and when she left... "What?"
"What's going on?"
"Go to sleep, Melissa."
"You think I don't want to?" Alicia felt the bed sink under her as Melissa sat on it.
"Then why aren't you?" Alicia mumbled into her pillow.
"Alicia. Look at me," Melissa said in her most stubborn voice.
She sighed and did so, flopping over onto her back.
The shadow sitting on her bed leaned forward and remarked in a tone both surprised and matter-of-fact, "You've been crying."
No, not really. Not that much. Just because he hadn't done anything in even a vague response wasn't a reason to cry. "..."
"Why? Where've you been going on those walks of yours? Okay, that's obvious from the apron, the kitchen, but what are you doing there?"
"..."
"Don't think I haven't wondered what's up. It's the best friend's job to wonder. And worry. For Martel's sake, you've been going for half a year, ever since Cook asked you to... You met 'em. I'd thought so."
Nod.
"He is a he, right?"
She let out a breath, a short rueful laugh. "He's a he."
"...You liked him, didn't you?"
"How'd you-"
"You've a very readable face, you know that?"
Another laugh. "It's dark in here!"
"Maybe if you were just in a lit room," Melissa pointed out before grabbing back onto the original topic. "So what happened?"
Alicia looked at the ceiling only to have her silence vastly misinterpreted.
"He didn't try anything, did he?"
"Wha- what, no!" She sat upright. "He's a perfect gentleman!"
"Okay, okay, shhhh. Remember the time."
"Sorry," Alicia whispered back before furiously continuing, "but he wouldn't do... that."
"Ali, all I know is that you've been seeing him, at night, for about six months, you like him and now you're in tears-"
"I am not in tears."
"-so I've got very little to go on. Unless you actually tell me what happened, that is."
"I..." Her throat closed up on her and she nearly made herself a liar. "I did something stupid."
"What?" Melissa asked, softly, gently.
And then the shock wore off. The mere magnitude of what she'd done... So complete irreversible that she was more than scared by it. She'd lose him now, she was sure of it. There wasn't one reason why he'd want to have that kind of relationship with her. She felt like bashing her head against the wall. Of all the stupid, idiotic, moronic...
What kind of an idiot kisses a person right after eating something with onions in it?
"I just... I don't even know why I did it. It just came over me and I..."
"You told him."
"I kissed him."
Saying it aloud was a very odd thing. Final. Irrevocable.
Done.
And she watched Melissa sit there in a sort of stunned silence, before saying at last, "...Wow."
Alicia let out a dull-voiced, "Yeah."
"So..."
She let out what had been torturing her the most. "He didn't even try to stop me."
A pause. "Alicia," her friend told her incredulously, "when a guy lets you kiss him, that's considered a good sign."
Oh and now the sniffles were coming back. "No, I, I ran."
"What? You lost me."
"After. I ran."
"Let me get this straight: you kissed him and then you ran away?"
"And he let me."
Alicia abruptly found herself being hugged, and an insistent whisper of "It'll be okay" in her ear.
That moment lasted for a very long time.
"And you know," Melissa said some time later, "some guys just have very slow reaction times. No, really, it's true. Remember my ex, Gregory?"
She looked up, blinking back tears. No more crying. No more stupidity. She'd listen, she'd think. And Gregory was... "The one you threw a shoe at?"
"Yes. Slow reaction times."
"I didn't throw a shoe at him, I kissed him."
"Same basic principle. I'm guessing. If he was surprised, then, well, who knows." Melissa sighed. "I'm not telling you to get your hopes up. Just... don't let them go down either."
"...Thanks."
"What're best friends for?" Melissa yawned and stood up tiredly. "And if it's alright with you, I think I'm going to go to sleep now."
"Good-night, then."
"G'night."
The room was quiet for a minute or so.
"Ali?"
"Mmm?"
"What's his name?"
.-.-.-.-.-.
"I can't look." Alicia held her apron out to her friend. "You do it."
She'd been surprised to find out over the course of, well, yesterday how much she'd wanted to talk about him. When Melissa had spent all that time talking to her about her first boyfriend, the ten-year-old Alicia had just thought it was a Melissa thing, or a fourteen-year-old thing. It was rapidly turning out to be a girl-with-a-huge-crush thing.
And the stability factor by itself was amazing. After a lot of demanding questions and a fair bit of berating, Melissa seemed to have accepted, in the broadest sense of the word, the situation. So Alicia had serious advice now. She wasn't alone. She knew that, now, whatever happened, she could handle it.
It was like what Daddy had said about his friend Ralf: a friend was a pillar that would help lift you up above the mess you'd be in down on the ground. Maybe she would have preferred Presea to be the one holding her hand, but Alicia was still lucky. Very lucky. No matter what happened next, she was lucky.
She might just have a hard time remembering that in a minute.
"Are you sure you want me to?" Melissa grinned hurriedly. "What if it's something horrifically mushy?"
Yesterday morning, Alicia had realized two details resulting from her taking the apron with her. The first was that she'd have to some how to smuggle the apron back into the kitchen. That was fairly easy to fix. The second part was far more aggravating. And nerve-wracking.
On the off-chance that Melissa's Slow Reaction Theory was right, then Alicia had thoroughly cut him off from any sort of reaction at all by taking the apron. Which, any way it was looked at, was not a good thing.
So now, the day after that, in the kitchen early enough for it to be relatively empty, keeping it in mind that he wasn't even supposed to come until that night, Alicia nodded and after swallowing once, said softly, weakly, "Go ahead."
She watched as Melissa reached in the pockets. Pulled out a small, folded piece of paper. Carefully folded, her mind registered dully. Or imagined, being hopeful.
Melissa held it out to her and opened it.
Upside-down.
Alicia took it. Read.
Alicia, please come back tonight. There is a matter I must speak to you of.
R
Huh.
Huh.
She was vaguely aware of Melissa speaking, softly calling her name.
Alicia looked at her, feeling oddly calm. Or maybe numb.
"Ali, it's time for work. You want me to tell Cook you're sick? You know how much he'd freak over sanitation."
"No. I'm- I'm okay. Really. Just- you- you-" Alicia swallowed. Took a breath. Handed her best friend the paper. "What does that mean?"
"I only know him through you and the couple of notes you showed me. I can't be sure of nuances. The first part's promising."
The last... well, it made Alicia's mind look through seldom-used sections of her vocabulary, pulling out words like "ominous", "doom-laden" and "foreboding".
"Okay," she said. "It'll be okay."
.-.-.-.-.-.
She kept that in mind throughout a morning of assembling fruit cups for the breakfast crowd, her own breakfast, a late-morning and early afternoon of making sandwiches, her lunch hour, and an hour after that with those preparing the night's desert. In fact, by the time her shift was over for the day, her mood had lightened enough for her to laugh at the "Co-Presidentes" jokes that were finally getting some polish. Or maybe her brain just decided to shut out the possibility of on-coming doom. Either one.
And, strangely, even after a few hours of semi-silent card-games with Melissa in their room, he was calm. Perfectly, absolutely calm. No reason. She was just calm. Wondering how long she would stay that way, but still calm.
"Do you think it's time yet?" Melissa asked her at midnight in a whisper.
Alicia shook her head and laid down a Goddess card on Melissa's King, managing to distract her friend for all of three seconds. She was humored for about fifteen minutes, though.
12:15
"Now?"
12:30
"Now?"
12:45
"Now?"
12:46
"Ali, go. Now. Not going at this point is rejection."
Alicia went.
And stopped once she was fairly sure Melissa would think her lack of footsteps meant she was out of hearing distance. She wasn't how sure she stayed there, leaning against the wall, staring half-blindly at the edging in the dark, thinking about everything and anything else than what she should have been thinking of.
Which was stupid. Was she going to make Mommy a liar for saying she had Daddy's common sense? No. No, she wouldn't.
So she didn't.
She continued, stopping only when she heard a very familiar sound.
Footsteps.
Heavy footsteps.
He was pacing.
Pacing people were worried people.
She had to be sadistic or something to be feeling this happy.
She walked closer to the kitchen door as quietly as she could. Peeked in when the pacing stopped, like how she had in the early days, back when she was just trying to catch a glimpse of a stranger.
His back was to her, his shoulders the most tense she had ever seen them. Little things stuck out at her, the tilt of his head, the obvious tension in his arms.
He looked as horrible as she had been feeling for the past few days. He... This was... this was wonderful. Thanks be to the Goddess, protecting us e'en as she sleeps...
He turned around.
And there they were again, Alicia and the Rearranger. She in the doorway, he by the counter, almost exactly as they'd been half a year ago. He'd sent a note, asking her to come. Once again, she had. Once again, those ten feet were incredibly long. Only there was one drastically large difference.
The perfect moment came after he turned, unease and discontent vanishing instead of appearing.
But this moment too was by no means long enough.
They looked at each other for what felt like a long while, at least one of them having no idea what to say. Where had her calm gone? Probably the same place as her even pulse and normal breathing pattern, but why now? Why wasn't her left knee feeling like it could support her? Her entire left leg-
"Alicia-"
"I'm sorry," she said quickly, talking to his shoes. "I just- I don't really know what I- I'm sorry."
"Simply promise me you will not run away in the future."
It was after he said this that Alicia did the bravest thing she had ever done in her entire life. Braver than conquering her fear of lighting the cheap matches it was so easy to burn one's finger on. Braver than when at Mommy's funeral she had told the story of how Mommy had sang a song to her and Presea each night without fail. Braver, she thought, than even going to a strange place as a child and not knowing if she would ever go home.
She looked up, blue-eyed gaze meeting blue-eyed gaze. Nodded.
And he looked so relieved.
Feeling unbelievably drained and tired and happy and relieved, she smiled at him. And thought for a moment, as he leaned forward slowly, that he was going to-
But then he didn't.
Instead he took her hand and said, "There is something I must tell you."
A small lump of dread reformed in her chest at his too-controlled tone, the tension back in his shoulders. The determined set to his expression. "What?"
"My name is Regal Bryant."
"What?" she said again. She had to have heard that wrong. There wasn't any other- she had to have heard that wrong. Because impersonating a noble of any rank was a serious offence and he wasn't- She'd heard it wrong.
Holding her hand gently, but firmly, in his, he repeated himself. "My name is Regal Bryant."
"As in..." El Presidente Junior. He was El Presidente Junior. The man who any picky eater in the kitchen was compared to, one of the ultimate insults.
"The duke. Yes."
Her mouth was open, but she couldn't get any words out all of a sudden. Couldn't breath in, couldn't say anything. Like her throat was blocked. On some level, it occurred to her that his holding her hand had been a good idea on his part; promise or no promise, she would have been out the door already otherwise.
Finally, in a tone of complete bewilderment, words came tumbling out. "What do I call you?" She added belatedly, awkwardly, hopelessly confused, "Your Grace." That's how common people addressed dukes, wasn't it? Or in her case, their shoes. If she'd thought it hard to look at him before, it was impossible now. This was all just too much. For months she'd been expecting that his name was something no parent should name a child and he'd just been too embarrassed. But this, it was too much. Everything she'd ever heard about nobles seemed to be bumping about inside of her head: nobles got bored easily, they cared more for appearance than substance, they used people, they looked down on those of lower classes while trying for the attention of those higher, they-
"Call me 'Regal'," he told her gently, making an obvious effort at calming her down. "Were we ever to meet in public, 'Master Regal' or 'Mr. Bryant' would be suitable, but I would like you to refer to me by my first name in private."
His voice was the same. And his hand felt the same. And though she'd never stared at his feet before, she had the feeling that they were the same too. It felt wrong in a way, like something should have visibly changed. Nothing could change this much without looking like it had. He liked her, but he couldn't, but she wanted him to and her mind felt like it had broken into bits before running away in eleven different directions. A minute ago, less, she had wanted this person to kiss her; now she thought she would panic if he so much as hugged her.
...She had kissed a duke.
This was insane. She wasn't even fourteen yet, what was she doing here?
"Alicia."
Looking up was just a reaction, something done without thought. But she found she couldn't look away. It was there in his expression, all of it. He didn't want to lose her. She mattered to him.
The reverse was also true.
"Okay." Her voiced sounded wrong to her ears. Her stomach felt like it had been filled with something heavy. The other two times had been warm-ups: this was the hardest thing she would do all night. And if it wasn't, then she would probably faint. "Okay, Regal."
But it was all suddenly very worth it, to see how he looked at her when she said that. "Good."
A slightly awkward moment passed.
"I, uh, I probably should start heading back. My roommate might worry."
He looked slightly surprised – had she ever mentioned having a roommate before? – but accepted it. In one semi-smooth motion, he adjusted his grip on her hand, raised it, and lightly kissed the back of it. "Good-night, Alicia."
How red was it possible for a person to turn? "Good-night, Regal."