3. Truth.
T: This is a teeny weenie chapter when compared to the other two; hopefully it makes up for it in content! Warnings remain the same and I still fail to own the series!
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Once the levity of their engagement had faded a little, they had sat down together and discussed their next step.
They had to let their parents know of the relationship and of their reasons for remaining silent for as long as they had.
It was a task that Tamaki had found easy enough, his father, who was of a similar nature to his son, being swept into the romance of it all and his mother content that her child had, at last, found happiness.
He would, at some point, have to face his grandmother with the news, a task he had chosen, for the moment, to ignore completely.
She had thought simply to wait until the weekend and then take her father out for a little sight seeing before sitting him down and talking over her truth sensibly. Then her drama loving fiancé had become involved and suddenly she had had a scheme on her hands.
Thus, when Thursday morning had rolled around, she had cornered her father and, her most pleasant smile on her lips she had said,
"Do not work on today, father."
"Why?"
"I have something that I wish to talk to you of." This had, of course, released a borage of questions that she had evaded with the well practiced 'I have to study' ploy.
She had hoped that, until the evening, that would be the end of the matter and yet, mid way through her morning study, her fiancé had come to her nursing a 'crisis of confidence'.
Reluctantly she'd spent the rest of her free period appealing to his ego by assuring him, "It's your plan, isn't it? How could it possibly go wrong?" something that had eventually revived his confidence and put the bounce back into his step.
They'd walked back to her house together, the warmth of his presence at her side easing the nervousness she had begun to feel.
Her father had returned just as she was pulling the main course from the oven, the cheer with which he announces this fact fading swiftly as he notes their 'visitor'.
"Haruhi, would you mind fetching the broom? It seems a pest has gotten into the house and I wish to shoo it away."
"Tamaki is here as my guest, father, thus I would ask you to mind your manners."
Her father had fallen, then, into a Tamaki like funk, only the promise of a slightly 'up market' meal pulling him free from his 'corner of wo'.
By the main course Tamaki had, with the subtle use of his host's charm, managed to pull Ranka from this poor mood and, though the elder man was being far from civil, it was as a step in the right direction.
Once they'd finished the meal and, between the three of them, cleared away the dishes, her father had enquired,
"So what did you want to talk to me about, Haruhi?"
She can not work her way around so direct a question and, stretching to claim Tamaki's hand, she says,
"Tamaki and I are engaged, father."
"I thought that it might be something like that." He sighs and, running a hand through his hair, he says, "No matter how I say this it's going to sound harsh and so I'm just going to get it out,
"You are from two very different worlds and, sooner or later, that is going to become very apparent to you.
"Haruhi, all you have wanted for the longest of times is to follow in your mother's footsteps, a dream that you'd have to set aside if you fell pregnant.
"Tamaki, you are used to the high life, used to having everything handed to you. Can you honestly tell me that you'd give that all up to be with my daughter?"
"I'd live in a cardboard box, completely naked, if it meant that I could be with your daughter."
"You mean that now but will you mean it later, when the lust has gone and all you are left with is bitter sweet memories?"
"Can you tell me truly that that was all that was left between mother and yourself? Can you look me in the eye and say that you gave up loving again simply for the sake of nostalgia?" She enquired, the irrational anger in her heart driving the words and the sharp venom behind them.
Her father smiles then and kissing her gently on the forehead he remarks,
"No, it was not and I'm certain now that it will not be the case between you two either."
"So you were testing us?"
"Maybe."
She is about to tell him off when Tamaki grabs a hold of his hands and says,
"What a beautiful show of your fatherly devotion!" Her father reacts to the charm in his normal manner and she watches the pair with a terrible sense of foreboding.
Her life was never quite going to be the way it had before she'd realised her heart…
Maybe that'd mean that, somewhere down the line, she'd look back at who she had been with a wistful eye. Or, more likely, it would mean that she'd become something more than she might have been...
…That his love and his faith would make her stronger.
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T: Warned you it was teeny! I was tempted to do the face off with nana Suoh but eventually I talked myself out of it…the angst would have ruined the mood of the story!