The Dance of the Butterflies
Chapter 7
Shiho hadn't spoken more than a few words during their drive to Garderobe Academy and Arika felt grateful for the quiet. Under normal circumstances she may have felt the need to saturate the silence with as many words as she could fill it, but today she hardly had the energy to even carry herself. The muscles in her face were strained from the constant smiling, and she realized that facades were a difficult thing to maintain, like trying to keep a mask on that didn't quite fit, the constant adjusting and tampering, all just to keep it from slipping off, and hoping that no one would notice. It was too much of a balancing act and Arika was no juggler.
Of course, in Arika's case, the façade had been more than just a metaphor. Three weeks had passed since Mashiro and McAllister's engagement had been announced, that's three weeks since she had cracked her nose and was forced to wear a ridiculous oversized nose guard morning, noon, and night. The thing had encompassed nearly her whole face. Relief couldn't describe how she felt once the doctor downgraded her to a less obtrusive nose guard, made entirely of a durable clear plastic that molded around her eyes and nose. The new piece was just as encompassing of her face, but she was far less self-conscious with it. Or, at least, she was whenever the duke was not knocking on it to garner her attention.
Her hand absently stroked the clear plastic over her nearly-recovered nose and she exhaled a small sigh of relief. Glad that's finally over...
She'd practically taken a hammer to the old nose guard when the doctor gave the okay to downgrade it.
"I forgot how much I missed this place," Shiho uttered over the hum of the engine.
Arika turned to Shiho, having already forgotten that she was not alone in the car. Shiho had a hand pressed listlessly against the cold glass as light etched a ghostly reflection of the streets of Windbloom in her eyes. Even so, Arika could see the distant look on her face and knew that Shiho was looking beyond the streets and the buildings that fashioned the city. She was seeing old ghosts. Arika saw them too; whenever she walked the grounds and the corridors of Garderobe she caught glimpses of Erstin and Nina. Sometimes she heard Chie Hallard's deep throaty laugh, but it was Erstin Ho's soft, girlish chuckle that haunted her the most.
She couldn't imagine Shiho's ghosts to be as heavy and burdensome as the expression on her face let on, and yet she looked so pale and unexpectedly frail that the Shiho before her seemed more like an apparition. She knew something must have happened during the coup d'état. Duke McAllister and his entourage had been tight-lipped about the details, but the gritty nature of the overthrow was implicit in their careful wording. Arika had been specifically kept out of the war council debriefing; Mashiro had made sure of that without explanation.
There was a time when she believed that becoming an Otome and the path of righteousness and heroics were one and the same. It was pure starry-eyed naïveté on her part; she had sought after a connection to her mother by walking along the same path. Her blind determination fueled by stories of her mother's heroics had brought her here, even after she learned the truth of what it meant to be an Otome.
Mashiro had insisted that Arika was no tool, and being full of pride and idealism Arika was just as determined to believe it. But it was hard to ignore the implications of her position; the agendas and the half truths that threatened to expose the lie. She knew it was also the reason why the expression on Shiho's face made her anxious, so far as to claw at her cuticles to put herself at ease.
"He's not so bad, you know," Shiho said without so much as a glance. Arika expected her to turn her way but Shiho's gaze remained fixed to the world outside her window. It occurred to her that Shiho was talking at her and not to her, and she also turned away to the world beyond her side of the glass.
"Mashiro told me the same thing," Arika answered tersely, her brows furrowed with contempt. "Tate the great, the wonderful, the wise, and he's 'oh so very nice'," her voice increased in timbre with each mockingly derisive remark. She was being needlessly difficult and she knew it even as she spoke, but bile continued to spill from her lips.
"I mean, I know he's not a bad person, I know that he means well, and I know that a marital union between Mashiro and the Duke is going to keep us from war and ensure Tate's claim as the High Ducal heir. I know all this is supposed to be this great thing for us because it also means that we'll have access to the capital of trade and probably one of the most strategically placed territories and all, but so what? The whole thing just pisses me off."
Her hands were balled into tight fists and she was dimly aware of the ache in her fingers.
"Would you please lower you voice? You do realize that the driver can hear everything you're saying, don't you?" Arika cowered shamefully. "Geez, must you always be such a loud mouth?"
Shiho felt the numbness inside her dissipate and was silently thankful for Arika's emotional outburst. It had been long since they had considered themselves to be rivals, but Arika always managed to trigger Shiho's imprudent conceit, as if their emotional maturity had been suspended in adolescence.
"It's not like it matters if he hears," Arika replied with more confidence than she felt. "They've all signed confidentiality clauses."
"Of course it matters! Servants talk to other servants," Shiho scolded abrasively, her brows contorted in disbelief at Arika's gullibility. "Your secrets may not get plastered all over the Sunday paper, but with gossip to fuel the flames, there's no need!"
"Now look who's being the loud mouth," Arika scoffed cockily. Just as Shiho was going to continue her tirade, she caught the probing eyes of the driver looking her way through the rear view mirror. Embarrassed to have fallen into her own trap, Shiho closed her mouth and bit her bottom lip.
"Just be careful, okay?" She said with greater composure, her voice softer and beyond the driver's earshot. "The last thing you want is to have your secrets and your private feelings being passed around like some juicy tidbit."
"I don't care if everyone knows that I can't stand the Duke," Arika grumbled softly.
"Well, you should care because that Duke will soon be married to Mashiro," Shiho pointed out and Arika cast her gaze downward. "I'm sure she'll care if the animosity that you have for her husband is widely known."
Arika made no move to reply. There wasn't anything she could say that didn't end with her eating her own words and she figured that her silence made for enough of a concession.
Deep down, she knew that there really wasn't anything malignant about Duke Tate McAllister's character. Under different circumstances Arika might have liked him – might have even found him attractive considering how much of a likeness he had to Sergay Wang. There was something inviting and charming in his person, the allure of the-boy-next-door, and unlike Sergay, Tate was not so tainted by darker forces; there was a purity and dignity to his actions. (But the coup d'état…) Although, perhaps not as pure as he appeared to be.
"I know he's not a bad guy," Arika conceded, but her eyes were weighed down by sorrow and lament. "It would be a lot easier for me to hate him if he was a terrible person, or even a jerk. Then I could just lock him up with Nagi Dài Artai, feed the key to Mikoto, and nobody would care."
Shiho nodded sympathetically.
"Sometimes I wish for something like that too."
Arika raised a surprised brow. And here I thought that she liked Duke McAllister. But, unbeknownst to Arika, the person Shiho pictured sealed away behind those bars had a far fairer complexion.
~x~
Arika hadn't expected to run into Duke McAllister on the grounds of her old school. While she could normally spot his cocky grin a kilometer away, she hadn't taken notice of him until they had collided into each other.
Tate's arms had wrapped around her smaller frame as soon as he felt the impact, sparing Arika the embarrassment of crash-landing back before the already-prying eyes of a busy student body. Her face was buried in his chest, her breathing stifled by his cashmere sweater, and fogging up her plastic nose guard. He smiled affably at her and Arika peered up.
"I'm starting to believe that, perhaps, you are my destiny, Arika Yumemiya," McAllister teased, "How can I possibly resist the implication of your lovely form entwined with mine?"
Arika flushed red and tried to tear herself away from McAllister's firm embrace, but he denied her escape, squeezing her tighter against his chest.
"Let go!" She insisted through grit teeth, but his eyes sparkled with mischief, and she knew he had no intention of releasing her just yet.
The tighter he squeezed, the harder she squirmed to set herself free. When he finally released her, her arms had been pushing so strenuously against him that she had effectively launched herself backwards, stumbling and then fumbling onto the ground.
Shiho, who had remained completely silent through the entire exchange, suppressed her obvious amusement by biting down on her lips before casting her childhood friend a menacing glare. McAllister's smirk quickly softened and a meaningful look passed between them. Shiho had not been herself for days, and it relieved him to see her back to her old ways. She returned his warm smile, indifferent to Arika's grumblings.
Shiho liked this side of McAllister best. It was in moments like these that she could see the Yuuchi of her childhood seep through Tate McAllister's façade. It wasn't the child who was afraid of his uncle, or the man who stood stone-faced before the Gristholm throne; it was the boy with the thousand smiles, who played with her all summer before her mother finally took her home, kicking and screaming, at the summer's end.
McAllister offered his hand to Arika, who had remained pouting on the ground. She hesitated briefly, but with a reassuring nod from Shiho, she gingerly accepted his hand and pulled herself up to her feet.
"Why is it that whenever I feel a pain in my side, you're there to aggravate it even more?" Arika grumbled ungraciously.
"I suppose that also has something to do with our intertwining fates."
"Oh please, you're so-"
She was preparing to launch into a parade of insults when Shiho placed a placating hand on Arika's forearm. Unmoved, Arika glared back at her peer's serene gaze, but her budding tirade was quickly and effectively brought to an end by the heel that dug painfully into Arika's left foot. Shiho smiled sweetly and Arika grit her teeth.
"Actually, I'm glad I got a chance to run into you today, even if it was in a literal sense," McAllister continued on, overlooking the cold war that was brewing between the girls, but with the tiniest smirk lingering on the corners of his mouth.
"Wh-why is that?" Arika elbowed Shiho, wedging her adversary's heel off of her foot.
"There's something I've needed to discuss with you for some time now." He replied. Arika couldn't fathom what the duke could possibly need to talk about with her. She searched his face for any clue but his easy disposition provided no answers. He was the type of person who could announce that an asteroid the size of the western continent was hurling toward Windbloom at 60 kilometers per second on the same beat as a farmer who contemplates the weather.
"Shiho, do you mind if I steal her away for a bit?"
"She minds!" Arika interjected before Shiho could reply. "We have a sparring demonstration and I can't possibly be detained."
"Is that so?" He mused, tapping at the plastic over her face.
"It is," she snapped back and swatted his hand away.
"Shiho?"
Shiho wordlessly conceded to the duke's request and started off toward the direction of the headmistress' office, ignoring Arika's desperate and deflated protests.
"That back-stabbing snake-haired psychopath," Arika muttered under her breath.
The duke pretended not to have heard her as he gestured she follow him. When his distracted and reluctant companion failed to acknowledge him, he startled her by taking her hand and dragging her off to a more remote area of the campus.
Oh, this can't possibly be good, Arika concluded. Not at all.
The spectating students that had gathered around the ruckus were left to ponder over what they had just born witness to.
"Was that Meister Yumemiya?" A short mousy first year student inquired, brows crinkled in disbelief.
"No, probably the Queen's Jester Acting Troupe," her equally befuddled friend replied.
~x~
Author's Note: I realize it's been a long time since I have updated on this story and that many of you are of a good mind to soak me with gasoline and set me on fire for 'abandoning' this fic. Believe it or not, I've never intended to abandon it. Am I a terribly slow writer? Yes. I'd hesitated posting this chapter for some time simply because it's not complete, but I figured it might be a good idea to throw it out there before I resume with this story in June. Feel free to flame. I deserve it.