Day 20

Albatross

(Sophie/?)

The problem with being the richest and prettiest girl in Europe wasn't the chance of kidnapping for ransom (she had bodyguards). It wasn't even that the expectations of her were as high as the sky.

It was that, when it came down to it, she had too much choice. Specifically, too many boys.

Okay, she didn't exactly have queues of suitors, but there were certainly a lot more than she needed. She didn't even like very many of them. But she had been brought up to be polite, and so she put up with the matchmaking attempts from either his or her set of parents, her sister, his sisters if he had them, misinformed tabloid writers, slightly more well-meaning but equally misinformed press agents... well, you can get the picture.

She wasn't sure why she didn't like them, and it wasn't until she was nearly sixteen that she realised that it was probably because she didn't know what she would like. So, one night, after a carefully orchestrated dance set where she took enormous pains to dance with everyone once and nobody twice, she started the list.

It wasn't much of a list, actually. Every girl she had ever been friendly enough with to ask had one. What are your ideal qualities in a husband?

Well, she wasn't thinking about husbands, technically, because husbands were people organised by other people for her before she had managed to make enough of a name for herself out in the world that news coverage of her tended to focus on her and not the family she came from.

What are your ideal qualities in a boyfriend?

And actually, she wasn't thinking about boyfriends either, because she had a lot of boy-friends. Julian had sworn to defend her honour from anything that might hurt her, and had already threatened three tabloid papers on her behalf when she asked (he had a lot of leverage with them, it appeared). Wales had grinned, and offered his family fortune to bail her out of anything she felt like getting herself into and she had laughed helplessly because honestly, Wales, she didn't need a criminal record, but if he was going to be in the cell with her then she'd do it all anyway. And Klaus (poor, dear Klaus with three brothers and no sisters) had sat with her on the sofa for three hours when her grandmother died and cried for her because she was so cold inside that all her tears had frozen. And then he'd made her brioche because he knew it was her favourite even though he denied all knowledge of the recipe afterwards. I only make sourdough, he'd insisted. Brioche? What is this flimsy French nonsense? But he'd not quite met her eyes, and she'd loved him all the more for it.

So she had her ideal bunch of boy-friends.

What are your ideal qualities in a partner?

Much better. Partner implied equality, someone she could move separately from but never without. Someone on the other end of the seesaw, because those things were only fun if the two sides could actually balance each other.

So. The list.

One – He should have a nice smile.

Or rather, he should have a nice smile that he gave to everyone else, and a beautiful, secret smile that only those closest to him ever saw. She knew it was greedy, but she wanted a smile that was just hers.

Two – He mustn't be intimidated by money, snobbery or general rich-European-upper-class-ness.

This was very important. If he ran away from her wealth or her family then there was nothing she could do because it came with the territory with her. Yes of course she'd give up being rich for love, because that was what happened in love stories, but she couldn't give up her family, and her family had a reputation for a reason.

Three – He should know how to ballroom dance, or at least manage a sensible waltz.

She couldn't imagine marrying someone who couldn't do that. She went to so many balls and dinner dances that a partner who couldn't dance would be unthinkable.

Four – He should be a blader.

No-one but a blader could understand the connection to her blade. It was at least half of herself, and someday someone would have to understand that when she said he is my other half she meant he shares my heart with Cetus.

Five – He should be a bit taller than her.

After that, her list degenerated into things like Trusting, Loyal, Honest, Patient, Kind, Good, Gentle, Brave; but she quickly realised that no matter where she looked she'd never find someone that perfect. She grinned to herself suddenly and wrote down Not Perfect, because if he was perfect then that would terrify and intimidate her in equal amounts.

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She wasn't even thinking about The List the first time she met him. He just sort of drifted into her life like a leaf blowing down the street and catching in her hair.

The first few times, he downright terrified her. She knew what evil looked like – or she'd thought she knew. After that day, she was certain, and was also certain that she knew what pain and terror looked like.

He had been so scared.

When she faced him across the dish with Wales at her side, Konzern's Twin Jewels protecting their leader from the Darkness, she had wondered what he was thinking. At first she'd assumed that he'd allowed the Darkness to take control in order to amplify his already impressive power, but there was something drifting almost unconscious at the back of his eyes, something still fighting to get out, to hold on, as the Darkness choked it to death.

But he'd grown on her, slowly and steadily as they ran into each other maybe once every two months, and when her heart had jumped into her mouth when Julian mentioned that he'd invited him over to stay for a few weeks, mostly to discuss the business of the Konzern family business backing the WBBA for another big tournament now that the Nemesis Crisis was over, she knew that he was beginning to mean something to her.

Fortunately – or perhaps unfortunately – for her, her team of boy-friends were more than capable of noticing 'their' girl's newfound timidity around a certain young man when he arrived, and had immediately swung into action. It was almost terrifying seeing how quickly Julian organised a concert requiring himself on piano, Klaus on violin and Wales on cello – but not Sophie on viola. (Piano quartets had been one of their party pieces ever since the team had first been formed, but they'd never performed a piano trio before). Sophie was both frustrated and rather impressed at her friends' determination to create situations where the two of them would end up spending considerable amounts of time together. At first it was orchestrated, and intensely awkward, but before the end of the visit, it was voluntary on both sides.

He understood subtlety very well. Julian, Wales and Klaus had fixed him with a single, unified glare over breakfast one morning, and the young man had nodded quietly, acknowledging the silent threat. That was all that was said about the subject (well, 'said' might have been stretching it a little).

Later, when he had returned to Japan and she held his first letter to her in her hand, there was a brief argument over when the actual date had been, because there were seventy euros riding on the answer. Wales won both argument and bet.

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As a matter of fact, she didn't remember her List until it was nearly five years after she had first met him. She was packing her suitcase for her annual trip over to Japan for the Super Summer Tournament – long-distance relationships were so much easier when one of the couple had access to a private jet – when she caught sight of the corner of a notebook hiding under a stack of ancient magazines.

She really needed to tidy her room more often.

Hooking the book out from under the stack, thankfully without toppling the whole lot onto the floor and into her suitcase, she flicked the first page open just to see whether it was worth keeping around.

And there, right at the top, was written Ideal qualities I am looking for in a partner.

Oh. That was what this was.

She almost laughed. She couldn't really remember what she'd written on that list, but she was fairly certain that the nearly-sixteen-year-old version of her hadn't understood what love actually was. Despite her protests to the contrary, she'd still thought it was princes and white horses, first kisses and happily-ever-afters, when the reality was long weeks without seeing him, impossible hours at which to video-call him because of his job and the time difference, and a lot of hard work.

Would her fifteen-year-old self have let him pass?

One – He should have a nice smile for everyone and a beautiful one just for me.

He didn't smile much, though it was beautiful whenever she saw it. But it wasn't just for her – he gave it freely if it was deserved. But that was alright. That was him, and she wanted him to shine in front of everyone, because he deserved all the attention that he got.

Two – He mustn't be intimidated by money

He didn't. He actually didn't care one fig for where she came from. He walked into her house exactly the same way he walked into stadiums packed with thousands of fans, and the same way he walked into the grocery shop. He quietly dominated every room he entered just with the gentle force of his presence and silence. She'd seen him stride into a boardroom full of the governing body of the WBBA, all of them arguing over the latest health and safety regulations, and seen all of them fall silent when his confidence rolled over them, letting him take over the discussion and solve it in less than half the time it was threatening to take. He might not have a fortune of his own, but he had such a wealth of talent that she didn't care.

Three – He should know how to ballroom dance, or at least manage a sensible waltz.

And he couldn't. He really couldn't. Oh, he was graceful, and had a good memory for the steps, but he could never fully relax into the dance when they were at a social function, and so it was more like dragging him across the floor than dancing.

But he was always the first one to grin when her favourite song came on the radio, and was perfectly at ease spinning her around the kitchen to the beat of whatever it was (Tchaikovsky, Holst, Dvorák, Williams, Shore, Zimmer, Powell, Enya, Hisaishi, Queen, Teng, Lambert – she had an eclectic taste) because it wasn't the beat that mattered but the music and the song and the dance slow slow quick quick slow.

Four – He should be a blader.

Well, this at least he managed. Alright, it wasn't his primary focus – he merely used it as a tool to get the information he needed for his job as special agent and eventually Director of the WBBA. But he knew how the constellation link worked, and that was the important part. Part of his heart would always belong to the stars, just as hers did.

And she wasn't going to ever say he is my other half when it would always be more accurate to say he is all of me and I am all of him, because he quietly held her close and told her time and again until she finally believed it that she was so much more than just the man on her arm and the clothes on her back, no matter what the tabloids tried to say.

Five – He should be a bit taller than her.

Well, he was a littler taller than she was, but all things considered, that was a bit cosmetic because she could wear heels. Or he could? She still liked to dabble in fashion every now and then, and she'd been the designer behind the minor comeback in men's platform boots three years ago. She still had a soft spot for them. She knew him well, and he would probably be up for it if she was the one to suggest it, because he'd taught her long ago that if an idea sounded stupid it should at least be tried once just to find out. Strike the bell and bide the danger, he liked to quote from one of his favourite books.

And the rest?

Six: Trusting. Loyal. Honest. Patient. Kind. Good. Gentle. Brave.

Long ago she had scribbled all of them out because no-one could be that perfect. And it wasn't until now that she realised that it was all of his imperfections that made him honest about them. He trusted because he relied on her as much as she did on him, and she would not betray him because he would not betray her. He was loyal because his pride had once driven him to forsake his friends and he knew the consequences. His occasional flashes of arrogance or anger were softened by his strength of spirit. It was the shadows of his past that sprang up in nightmares that made him kind and gentle, and his crippling fear of darkness that made him brave when he walked home with her after nightfall, before heading off to his own house in the dark.

He wasn't perfect. But he was perfect for her.

So she scribbled out Not Perfect and wrote another line in its place.

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Seven - His hair should be the colour of the stars, and his name is Tsubasa.

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The quote is taken from The Magician's Nephew, by C.S. Lewis. Full quote at the top of my profile.

If you feel like helping to name some of these pairings, I've asked the lovely people on the Shipping List forum if they'll give me a hand too. AlbatrossShipping is my personal name for this ship, but I also quite like SeaBirdShipping...