We are not your parents.

It wasn't the constant bickering that got to her – that was actually the fun part of their relationship. She liked being challenged, liked that he did not shy away from an opportunity to tell her she was wrong and force her to look her mistakes in the eye; fix them. What got to her was that he could do that and then be completely hypocritical about his own.

Mimi didn't like bringing up the subject of his parents' divorce, but it was something that lingered in the back of her mind, a dark spot that grew larger and larger as time went by and she was met with one refusal after another. It had been fine when they were young and careless, too busy being all over each other to mind about the things that were underneath. But as the years went by and their relationship reached that strange, stagnant point – all their friends seemed to be getting married, or having children, or moving on with their lives – Mimi became increasingly anxious about their own future together.

After Takeru and Hikari announced their wedding, things could only get worse. Her insistence in knowing their plans, his reluctance in answering, negating the existence of a serious, adult relationship between them. He spent more time away, locked himself at work, involved in all sorts of projects that did not include her. It wasn't another woman; she knew that, but it did nothing to assuage her desperation.

Of course she would be the one to catch the bouquet. But instead of it filling her with hope, she felt nothing but despair as she saw the indifferent look in his eyes before he turned his back on the spectacle. She laughed, her eyes shining with tears that to everyone else looked like unbridled emotion and excitement. She drank, generously. And all the while, she grazed the pink and white bouquet with trembling fingers. Hours later, she'd still be holding on to it.

"I wouldn't have chosen roses," she murmured, her voice strange and loud in the silence of their hotel room.

"Hm?"

"It would've been peonies, I think. Maiden-hair fern and those – those funny little leaves, the velvety ones? It would've been precious."

Yamato stared at her, undoing the cuffs of his dress shirt slowly. Mimi looked back, placing the bouquet on the dresser.

"But if it had been you," her voice was quieter, "I would've gone with a sheaf of miniature white calla lilies," she looked up. "Simple, elegant. Like you."

"Mimi." His voice was quiet, careful. He looked at her from behind a curtain of thick lashes, one eyebrow raised.

"You don't want to marry me."

The admission was met with silence, with Yamato looking at her with unblinking, stark blue eyes. "Is this what you want to do? Tonight?" he asked. "We've been over this, Mi. I don't – I don't think marriage is for me."

"You can't know that, Yamato. My mother—,"

"We're not like them, Mi," he interrupted her. "I am not like Keisuke, whose very existence revolves around his wife and child." The words were almost spat, and Mimi's honey-coloured eyes were round, bright and shining.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked. "What's wrong with wanting a wife, and children — a family?"

Yamato stared at her, hard. She was bringing up old wounds, things that he had thought he'd left behind. But Takeru had taken Hikari for a wife and his parents had been there and she had caught that bloody bouquet and now - and now, Yamato felt he was falling apart at the very seams.

"I didn't have one then, and I don't want one now. It's really simple, but I don't expect you to understand." His voice was cold, unnecesarily so. But instead of flinching under his gaze, Mimi drew herself higher, her chin raised and her eyes hard and unforgiving.

"Is that what you think of me?" she asked, her voice too low for him to ignore. "I am not your mother, Yamato; I won't leave you."

"I'm not saying you are," he said, voice flat and cold.

"No, that's exactly what you're saying."

"I'm saying you can do whatever you want, Mimi," he snapped, "—just leave me out of it."

She opened her mouth but closed it without another word. He could tell it was killing her, keeping whatever she wanted to say in, but he did not encourage her to speak up, knowing they could only degrade into a fully-fledged fight at this point. They went through the motions swiftly but the silence between them grew and stretched and he didn't think he could stand to lie in the same bed with her and know she'd turn her back to him. He prolonged the moment, staying in the bath way more than he needed to, until his skin was pink and raw and the water had long gone cold.

He shouldn't have been surprised, he would later reflect. The bed was made, her suitcase gone. The damned bouquet was where she had left it but there was a note, too, written in the standard stationery issued by the hotel; he would've recognised her thin handwriting anywhere.

It didn't matter to me, if you never proposed. I just needed to know you'd always want this, us. That's what it meant to me.

And then, as if she had trembled when writing it:

Sorry if I am like her.

He held the note between trembling fingers; fought the instinct to run out and catch her. Yamato was Hiroaki's son just as much as she was Satoe's daughter and he would not run after her, because he knew that if he did, she would come back. And he could not bear to do that to her.

"You are nothing like her," he whispered, though no-one was there to hear him.

Author's Note: I think I should mention that these stories probably all happen in different universes, which is why facts and attitudes may change substantially from one to the other (while still staying true to their personalities, I'd hope). As always, thanks for reading and following (and reviewing, if you've done that too!).