"Taiho, I really must protest."
"Shut up, Doc. I'm fine."
"I mean it. You should be staying in bed."
"I've stayed in bed long enough."
"You might pull stitches—"
"They're plenty healed already."
"I'll call Her Highness."
"She'll agree with me."
"Taiho—"
Aku cut off her personal doctor, the Golden Surgeon, who she usually just called "Doc", with a glare. "I know what I'm doing. I've been blood sick before, you know."
Undeterred, the green-haired man said, "But you haven't had surgery before."
"Granted, but I heal fast. I'll be fine." She waved him off. Reluctantly, he backed away from the bed. "Give me a hand here, Chiyono. Not too much of a hand." With a slight amount of help from Chiyono, and almost more effort than she had in her, she sat up, rotated in bed so her feet were over the edge. She took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing." Again with a little help from Chiyono, she shifted over the edge, and let her weight fall on her feet.
She almost fell over forward, but took a step to balance herself, grabbed onto Chiyono. Then she straightened, letting go of her consort. She was standing. Her knees were shaky, each vibration sending rivulets of pain across her body, but she was doing it. She took a few unsteady steps over to a table, where a bowl of fruit was sitting. With hands shaking as much as her knees, she picked the thing up. Very carefully, so as not to lose balance again, she turned in place. She walked back to her bed, turned again, sat down. She didn't quite have the leverage to move to sit back against the wall, so Chiyono gave a little help. After she was in place, Chiyono sat next to her, taking one of Aku's hands in hers. A long sigh, a moment to select a fruit. One of those big red ones she loved. She took out a big bite. "There," she said through the juices. "That wasn't so hard."
While she ate, her doctor gave her a quick examination, making sure she hadn't strained anything to the breaking point. After he was done, he gave her a wordy admonishment, telling her to stay in bed to rest, then left the room, shaking his head to himself. Doc had served several Kirin, and he clearly wasn't used to her yet, so different as she was from the average Kirin.
Chiyono said, "You really shouldn't push yourself, Aku."
"You too, huh?" Aku said with a slight smile.
"I just don't want you to get hurt."
"I'll be fine. Besides, I only have three weeks to return, and I want to make a trip to Houzan before then."
Chiyono frowned. "Why Houzan?"
"I have a few questions to ask Gyokuyou."
"Like what?"
"Like if I'm allowed to do this." Aku grabbed Chiyono's robe, and pulled. She had nowhere near the strength to make her near, but, with a smile on her face, Chiyono obeyed. Each successive kiss with Chiyono Aku enjoyed more than the previous. But that could just be because she was recovering.
After a few seconds, they separated. Chiyono asked, "Is there any doubt about that?"
Aku shrugged. "It's not a thing usually done. I'd explain, but it's complicated, and I'm lazy."
For a moment, Chiyono said nothing, not meeting her eyes. By the expression on her face, it seemed she was about to say something hard to get out. Finally, "I see how people look at me."
"What?"
"The people who know I'm your consort."
Uh-oh. "How do they look at you?"
"Like… I don't know."
Aku gave her a sad sort of smile, even though she wasn't looking, and was probably turned too far away to catch it in her peripheral. "I think you know quite well."
"Like I'm a criminal."
It took nearly a minute for Aku to decide how to respond. "A very long time ago, when I originally asked Gyokuyou about these odd feelings I'd been having, so un-Kirin-like, she said some stuff, some warnings about entering into a relationship with a human."
"Warnings about what?" asked Chiyono, frowning a little.
"How humans see sex." Chiyono gave her a weird look, so she continued. "She explained that humans see sex as an act that—How did she word it?—requires and causes a loss of innocence. Kirin are seen as perfect innocents. So, humans get it in their heads that it's not something we'd be able to do all on our own."
A note of disgust on her voice, Chiyono said, "So, you're saying they think I'm raping you."
"Well, yes." She noticed the apology in her own voice.
Chiyono forced out a short, aggravated sigh.
Somewhat reluctantly, Aku said, "If you can't handle that, we can call the whole thing off. I won't hold it against you."
"No, it's okay. I don't care what they think."
Aku gave her another sad smile. "Liar."
With a slightly twisted smile, Chiyono looked back to her, shaking her head a little. "Okay, I'm lying. But it doesn't bother me enough to stop me from—" She broke off, her eyes suddenly looking past Aku, through her.
"Doesn't stop you from what?"
Chiyono either didn't hear the question or wasn't sure how to respond. So Aku waited for a while. The words that came weren't what Aku had been expecting. "This whole thing just slapped me in the face. Getting to have a conversation in Japanese for the first time in years. Those days in Jinjuu Manor I didn't speak a word of Common." There were, of course, different dialects in different areas of the Kingdoms, but the standardized language shared between the twelve was usually referred to as Common. "Well, maybe a couple pleases and thank yous to Hokumi, but other than that."
Hearing a reference to Hokumi sent a spear of pain through Aku's chest. The same must have happened to Chiyono, as she winced and hesitated for a moment. Aku could tell this spontaneous speech was far from over, so she wasn't even tempted to say anything. "It was like a dream. The best dream I'd ever had. And not just because of the Japanese. You're so—" Aku didn't get to hear what she was so, as Chiyono broke off, again hesitating.
Eventually she said, "When you came down to my apartment and—" —kissed the daylights out of her— "—I don't know. In just those couple minutes. It was like the world collapsed." Aku could kind of get what she meant. Maybe. "When you invited me to live with you, I—
"I don't know. At the time I sort of just agreed because...it's a little hard to resist you when you're smiling like that." Aku wasn't sure how she should feel about that particular thing. "But after you left, I went to bed and laid there. I thought about you, those few days with you in the palace, my whole life leading up to then.
"And then the world really did collapse. My life back in Yamato. My time with the troupe. Every thing I had done, every person I had met. They all, I knew, were leading me to that moment, with you. For the first time in my life, I knew I was where I was supposed to be. That I belonged somewhere. With someone."
Aku recognized the tightness in her throat and the blurring in her vision. Shit. She turned away a couple degrees, hoping Chiyono wouldn't notice. For a couple reasons. First, she didn't want Chiyono to feel bad for making her cry. For another, she didn't want to interrupt. She was curious where this was going. And Chiyono was kind of awkwardly not looking at her anyway. Whether she was just gathering her thoughts or if she were too uncomfortable admitting all this to keep eye contact—she had learned humans were sometimes powerfully uncomfortable admitting their own affections verbally, sometimes even to the subject of them—Aku wasn't sure, but it didn't really matter.
"I dreamed that night, all kinds of things I had never even considered before. It was nice, nicer than I can say. But then I went up to Jinjuu, and you were gone." Aku tried not to think about what she had been going through at the same time, tried not to let her memories spoil the moment. "I… It was almost like the shoku all over again. You had given me a new world. And then it was torn from me before I could really experience it.
"Then it all changed again, when I found the blood on your sheets. From that moment on, until I finally saw you alive, I—" She broke off again, staring into the distance. "I was absolutely terrified. I'd never been so scared in my life. How scared I was really surprised me. It wasn't really until that moment that I realized how much I already cared for you."
Then she suddenly turned to Aku, and Aku was only a little surprised to see tears in her eyes. "And I kept thinking, would things have been different if I hadn't told you to give me a day? If I had gone up with you—"
"No, Chiyono," Aku said, immediately seeing where this was going. She noticed absently that her voice was a little cracked. "If you were there you would have died too. There would have been three bodies in that room." With some effort she fought off the suffocating sense of horror the thought inspired. "Don't feel guilty. Don't."
Chiyono nodded, but didn't seem very convinced. Then she made a little self-conscious laugh. "I really went on there, didn't I?"
Aku nodded, smiling. "Yeah."
"I just thought you should understand."
"Understand what?"
"Though I barely just met you—" Chiyono hesitated only an instant. "—I think I love you." Before Aku could say anything, Chiyono said, "I mean, I've never been in love with anyone before, so I'm not entirely sure if what I'm feeling is that, I could be totally wrong, you don't have to—"
Before Chiyono could go digging herself any holes, Aku kissed her. After a few seconds she pulled back to say, "Shut up." Chiyono laughed through a constricted throat. "You don't have to explain yourself to me. I know. The way you've been treating me these last two weeks, I know. Just that you're still here after everything that's happened. And, well…"
"Well what?" asked Chiyono, wiping at her eyes.
"I may be a tensen, but even for tensen, there's only so much our bodies can take."
Now she was frowning again. "What do you mean?"
Aku was the one to break eye contact this time. "There will be scarring." He may be dead, but he'll never let her forget.
Her frown more severe, it took Chiyono a moment to find the power to speak. "You think I care about that? No offense, Aku, but I'm not in love with you because you're beautiful." Suddenly looking a little flustered, Chiyono added, "I mean, I'm sure it contributes, but it's not really why." For a moment she paused, as though trying to think of reasons why she did love her. "I mean, you're really nice, even to people you don't like."
"You mean the Royal Consort."
Chiyono shrugged. "You have infinite love for everyone. Even people who have been just awful to you."
"Who do you mean?"
"Her Highness." Before Aku could say anything to that accusation, Chiyono went on. "You have a really soft, sweet voice, you move like you're dancing, and the way you smile just looking at me…" She shrugged. "I don't know. It's everything and nothing."
Even though Aku was blinking back tears, she couldn't stop herself from saying, "Touke hasn't been awful to me."
Chiyono gave her a long, calculating sort of look. Slowly, she said, "I don't understand a lot of the nature of the relationship between Kirin and king. I know that, whatever may come, the Kirin is absolutely devoted. So I know that, no matter how much evidence or logic I give you, you will never be able to see it as I do. From the very little I have been able to gather—from what you implied, what the Chousai told me, from watching the two of you—I can infer she has treated you horridly." Before Aku could interrupt, she said, "I don't ask that you come to my way of thinking. But Her Highness already has. She acts guilty. She knows she did wrong. She'll probably never admit it, but there it is."
Suddenly, as smoothly as though the two thoughts were related, Chiyono met her eyes and said, "You're a lovable person."
The words hit her harder than she could possibly have expected. Her defenses had already been weakened by everything Chiyono had been saying, and now the walls were breached. Somewhere deep and wretched inside her, filled with bitterness and darkness, was suddenly flooded with light. It was like a great load was tossed unceremoniously off her shoulders. At once she felt incredible relief, but at the same time a little unbalanced. But it was more than enough for her to fully cry, something she had been threatening to do for a while. These were not tears of misery. She wasn't entirely sure what force was causing her to cry, but it was so powerful she felt she would burst with it. It didn't feel entirely unpleasant.
For the first time in over eighty years, the fog of depression was lifted, and she felt she could see clearly, feel and think clearly. And it was wonderful.
But it wasn't to last.
That very night, the nightmares started.
If anyone still cares about this, sorry for, uh, never coming back to this. Shit, been a year since the last update. And this isn't a sign I'm getting back into it either. I just noticed I had this short, awkward chapter finished but unposted, so, uh, here it is, I guess. I have, like, a page and a half of the next chapter, but I don't actually expect to get to it any time soon.
I have, however, been doing little bits of a sporadic work on two other Twelve Kingdoms stories, believe it or not. Just love this universe too much. One is chronologically before this one, detailing Mei's rise to prominence. The second is chronologically later—even after the books, actually—following some characters on a Shouzan. Because, well. My favorite one of the Twelve Kingdoms books does that, and I thought of a whole bunch of fun ideas to explore, and the idea just kind of popped in my head. Because I do that.
I may or may not post either of them ever, and I may or may not ever return to this story. We'll see, I guess.
~Wings
