The Dance of the Butterflies

Chapter 8

A/N: For anyone still bothering with this fic, please note that I have not edited this chapter.

Secretary Masaru Pitzer was grating on Mashiro's last nerve. For the past hour, Mashiro had been forced to indulge her Secretary of State's painstaking attention to the most frivolous of details, now bordering on obsessive compulsive. While the queen could certainly appreciate his earnest commitment and thoroughness, leaving no room for ambiguity in the contracts, the key points he dwelled upon were largely irrelevant considering that Mashiro and her cabinet members had unanimously agreed to the joint terms transcribed by both kingdoms.

"…now if you consider how the semantics of this subsection could be potentially interpreted in three different ways, you'll find that tariffs on coffee lean in Gristholm's favor by a fraction of a percent. As you can see, in the next several paragraphs, I've illustrated how this can—"

"Enough, Mr. Pitzer," Mashiro tersely cut him off. The Secretary of State had finally succeeded in crossing that line. "The decisions have been finalized and there will be no more changes."

Pitzer opened his mouth to object but quickly thought better of it.

"My apologies, your Highness, I only meant to serve."

"You have more than done your service, Secretary. But this matter is closed, and I have other pressing concerns. Now if you will excuse me…"

The Secretary nodded and gathered the abundance of documents that he's sprawled all over the Queens desk in the course of the past hour. He bowed awkwardly as he backed out of her office, his arms impossibly full, and forms threatening to spill over.

"Then, I shall see you later this evening to review the established definitions on joint military personnel. I'll have copies drawn up so –"

"No, Mr. Pitzer. We will not engage in any more reviews. I am already stretched on time and we have dedicated far too much of it simply reviewing what has already been set in stone."

The Secretary of State was clearly not ready to let the matter go just yet, it was clear on his face as he stood dumbly at the door, but Mashiro was also not prepared to give an inch. She had suspected for some time that these reviews were really just a ruse of sorts to keep her preoccupied. She'd barely had a moment for herself, let alone for anybody in her social circle, and that included Meister Yumemiya. Her nosy Secretary of State had made certain of that.

Mashiro narrowed her eyes at him as she excused him and shut the door before he could protest any further. From the other side of that door came the sound of a tall stack of documents collapsing to the floor.

~X~

Duke McAllister ran his fingers along the ivory keys of the grand piano, muddling out a vaguely familiar tune. Arika didn't bother to guess its name; in fact, she didn't dare to speak at all. For all his persistence to steal away from her time, the duke was certainly taking his. And although that bothered her, more bothersome was the way he seemed to be putting off what he'd expressly brought her here to say, away from the ears of others. Something in the duke's countenance was off, the way he easily moved through the music room, touching things and seemingly musing over the pictures on the walls, but his eyes were somber and it had not escaped her that he had not once met her gaze from the moment they had stepped into the unlit room.

"My mother was a poet," he finally spoke, sifting through sheet music. "She loved tragedies. Read up on them, wrote about them. And I always figured that it was because she found them terribly romantic."

Arika only stared back when the duke finally met her eyes, not sure what he expected her to say, if he expected anything from her at all.

"She used to read them to me," he went on. "Antigone, Orpheus and Eurydice, Orihime and Hikoboshi. Pyramus and Thisbe. Stories full of protagonists who were victim to their circumstances and their character." He paused again, as if for dramatic effect, and Arika wondered if all royals were set aside as children to learn the art of dramatic pauses. "I could never understand why a man would move heaven and earth to retrieve his wife from the underworld, only to lose her by way of his own doubt just moments before they were both free and clear. It all seemed so foolish to me."

"I can see why," Arika interjected. "But what does this all have to do—"

"With you? Everything."

She was lost and a little annoyed by this one-sided conversation as boredom began to set it. I should be sparring at this very moment, she whined internally. Why am I even bothering with this wannabe school marm.

"You're actually a lot like her."

"Eurydice?"

"No," he replied.

Orihime then, she concluded silently.

"My mother."

Oh.

"She was very strong of character; I've never known anyone stronger. I used to think her to be cold and indifferent, but that's only because I didn't understand it at first. My mother didn't read tragedies because she was some closeted foolish romantic, she read them as lessons. Because, as strong as she was on the surface, she was also quite tragic."

McAllister perused her face for some semblance of understanding. The girl had hardly seemed interested in what he'd had to say, but if he didn't have her attention before, the duke knew that he had it now. He saw the question, plain on her face.

"Why?" He queried for her. "Because she loved a man that could never be hers."

She wanted to turn away and leave him behind along with his double-edged words but her legs were planted to the tiles beneath her.

"You see, my mother came from a family that was all titles and no money. My grandfather could barely keep up with the appearances of wealth. His only son had married below his station, so there was no hope there, but he did have my mother, so he sends his thirteen-year-old daughter to court, hoping that she would draw advances from the Grand Duke, and with it his purse strings."

Stop talking.

"It doesn't happen, of course. Turns out that the Grand Duke's sexual appetite leaned toward the paid variety, as opposed to little girls; but he had a son, a son not much older than my mother. They grew quite attached as they grew up together, played together. Met in secret." He emphasized the last three words to make sure that Arika understood what he meant before moving on.

"Because even though their friendship was not forbidden, their love was."

This is not happening; I'm not listening to this. Even without a trace of malice on his face, she couldn't help but feel that he was on the attack, twisting a knife of double entendres with every other word.

McAllister moved toward her, running his hands along the row of desks that extended between them. Arika had hoped he was done, but he wasn't. "Politics makes no room for love," he went on, his voice softer and piteous. "It crushes it with deals and contracts. The Grand Duke was no different. He had designs to bind Gristholm with the Nation of Creswell through a marriage contract, and so you see, my mother could never aspire to be anything more to my father than a mistress."

The duke was standing in front of her now, eyes gazing into hers as he reached for a stray lock of her hair, smoothing it back behind her ear. Had anyone walked into the music room at that moment, the two would have appeared to them as a pair of lovers caught up in a tender moment, but the duke's brass colored eyes were resigned to pity, and Arika's were swelling with fear.

"Why are you telling me this," she implored, the unease in her stomach growing.

"Not to be cruel," he assured her.

"That's not what it seems like to me."

"But it's true, all the same."

Arika took a step back, control of her body once again hers. "I need to go," she uttered as she began to make her way out of the room.

"Arika, wait!" McAllister called after her. He'd tried to take hold of her hand, but she was faster than he had expected. He cut across the room, leaping over desks, and blocked her path out the door.

"I didn't drag you all the way out here just to upset you. I need you to understand that."

"There's more?" She asked incredulously, rage seeping from her voice and from the trembling that migrated to her fists. She wasn't about to listen to another one of his bloated self-serving speeches.

"Yes, but before I got to that point, I wanted you to know that I understand."

"Understand? You, understand? All I understand is that you're trying to rub your marriage in my face. Making insinuations about things that you don't know. And, and—making me into the fool!"

Arika pushed past him, not caring what consequences may belie her for striking a royal to the ground, as her rage took control. She wanted nothing more than to be as far away as possible from him and his false pity. Understand? Please! What could he possibly know! But even her disdain could not erase the story he'd told of mother.

"I love someone, too!" the Duke cried out in desperation just as she reached for the door. Her eyes grew wide in surprise and she stood frozen, trying to comprehend what she'd just heard.

"I love someone, too," he repeated, using the desk beside him to pull himself off the floor. "We're the same, you and me."

"But you love Mashiro, right? That someone is Mashiro."

"No."

She turned around and searched his face for any trace of deception.

He could be acting, she thought. Politicians make excellent liars.

"There was a time I thought I did," he explained. "But no, that someone is not Mashiro."

He could see her mind at work as she took it all in, processing all the implications and possibilities. Her naïveté made her easy to read, so much so that the sudden spark of hope that lit up in her eyes came as no surprise to the duke.

"Then, you can put an end it," she surmised, excitement glowing in her eyes. "The marriage. You could make it go away just like that. Then you and Mashiro would be free and no one would have to—"

"It doesn't work that way." He interceded, cutting her off before she got her hopes up too high. "This isn't something that Mashiro or I could put a stop to."

"But you're a duke and she's a queen. I don't see how you couldn't—"

"It's so much bigger than us, Arika. We have our obligations. Our lives are bound to our titles, to our kingdoms. That denies us certain freedoms—like love."

"Then why tell me any of this? That story of your mother. Your love for someone else. Why? If it doesn't change anything, then why bother?" She was nearing tears now, her voice cracking as she struggled not to.

"Because I wanted to give you a choice."

"If everything you've told me is true, then what choices are left?"

"A week from tonight, Mashiro and I will be married" he replied, clearing his throat and clearly uncomfortable about the words that came next. "And we'll be sharing a marriage bed." The color drained from Arika's face. She had spent the better part of the last three weeks trying not to think about it and failing miserably. Her naiveté wasn't so deeply rooted that she believed their marriage would remain a chaste one, but her breaking heart just couldn't bring itself to image otherwise. And now, the very person who would take her queen was telling her in no uncertain terms that their marriage would be a physical one.

"I don't want to hear anymore."

"I know," he replied. "It hurts. Which is why I think it would be easier for you if—"

"I went away?" There was no masking the bitterness in her voice. "Would that make it easier for you, too?"

"No," he replied. "But that's not what I was going to say."

"What, then?"

"I think you and Mashiro should take the chance to, to be…together. Before the wedding."

~X~

She barely noticed him leave. He had mumbled something to her before making his way out of the room, all the while wondering if perhaps he had said too much. Her stunned silence implied as much.

What's done is done, he told himself. He had said his piece.

Arika knelt down and rested her arms against one of the desks, her face cradled by her cold hands. The fragmented thoughts racing in her mind were moving too fast for any to gel into a single cohesive thought. She rubbed her forehead and wrapped her fingers over her face, willing her mind blank.

And just like that, the noise stopped.

Light peaked through the closed blinds and she remembered that it was still daylight. She propped herself up to her feet and smoothed down the wrinkles in her uniform and tucked away stray bangs behind her ears. When she left the music room and shut the door behind her, the light wash over her and renewed her once more. But McAllister's final words persisted, burrowing through the crevices of her mind.

He thinks it'll make things easier…so why does it feel like it's all getting so much harder?