Disclaimer: I do not own Yami no Matsuei. The Tsuzuki family, with the exception of Asato and Ruka, the Seika family, and the household servants are all my creation.

Notes: "Mamzerim" (pronounced mahm-ZEH-reem) is the Jewish concept of "forbidden children": children born from adultery or incest.

In case anyone forgot, since it's been awhile, Shinji is Yuuki's older brother; he is two years older than Yuuki and Ruka, and three years than Asato. Actually, here. These are the Tsuzuki and Seika family trees (birth dates included; death dates and certain characters are excluded so as to not be spoilers):

Takashi (1879)

--m. Aimi (1880)

----c. Daiki (1896)

----c. Ruka (1899)

----c. Asato (1900)

----c. Hideyoshi and Hiroto (1903)

----c. Kotone (miscarried 1908)

Ken'ichi (1882)

--m. Natsumi (1880)

----c. Shinji (1897)

----c. Yuuki (1899)

Emiko was also born in 1880, and Tomoko was born in 1885. (Remember them? They're the maids. They went with the family from Ageo to Tokyo, because they rock.)

"Their mother has been unfaithful, and conceived them in disgrace" – Hosea 2:5

Mamzerim

-May, 1917

"What are you doing?"

"Shh!" Ruka hissed, whipping her head around to glare at her brother.

"Sorry," Asato said, crouching beside his sister. Ruka had been staked outside of her father's office for around an hour, and curiosity finally won out.

"Ken'ichi-san and Natsumi-san are in there," Ruka whispered as Asato situated himself more comfortable on the floor. Despite the emptiness of the past two months since Yuuki walked out of his room and out of his life, Asato had to smile at the delight and excitement coloring Ruka's face. "Shinji's worried that he's going to be conscripted, so he told them he doesn't want to wait."

"How's it going?" Asato squeezed her arm, catching some of Ruka's giddy anticipation.

"I don't know; they're all so quiet I can't hear a damn thing."

From the corner of his eye, through the translucent sliding screen door, he saw the shadow of the people bowing. Hastily he stumbled to his feet and helped Ruka up; they had just barely straightened themselves out when the three parents stepped into the hall.

"You're both old enough to know better than to listen at doors," Takashi said, eyeing them sternly.

Asato had the grace to look embarrassed; Ruka did not. "Well?" she asked, her hands shaking at her side.

Takashi glanced at Natsumi and Ken'ichi. A moment of unreadable silence was replaced by three smiles. Natsumi stepped forward and took one of Ruka's hands in both her own.

"Welcome to our family, Ruka."

A shriek of pure joy erupted from Ruka's throat. Natsumi let go of her future daughter-in-law just in time, as Ruka immediately turned and threw herself into Asato's arms. Immersed in his sister and best friend's happiness Asato spun around in a haphazard circle, laughing with her.

"A little dignity wouldn't be amiss," Takashi grumbled, but half-heartedly; the corner of his lip turned up as Asato set Ruka on her feet and hugged her again, though this time stationary.

"Daddy, thank you!" Ruka turned, offering a slightly more subdued but nevertheless ecstatic embrace to her father. "I can't even begin to thank you enough."

"Thank Shinji's parents; they made a good case for the marriage," Takashi muttered; Natsumi and Ken'ichi exchanged knowing glances. Giving Yuuki up to another family had been difficult.

"You're not an easy negotiator," Ruka said, still giggling but now calm. She squeezed her father, and for a moment rested her head against his shoulder, allowing him to pat the cascade of black hair trailing down her back. "I love you, Daddy," she added under her breath.

A sense of having no privacy prevented Takashi from responding in kind. Ruka remembered his characteristic reservation and graciously stepped back, before turning her smiling face on Natsumi and Ken'ichi. "And thank you both, for agreeing not to wait."

"If the war calls him, we want him to have some happiness to take along," Ken'ichi said, smiling sadly at the prospect of losing another child to a foreign body. "Speaking of the groom-to-be, I should go collect him from the house, yes? He doesn't know we're here; we meant to surprise him."

"We should get both families together and celebrate," Ruka said, energy returning. "Daddy, can you send Tomoko-san to find Hideyoshi and Hiroto? They're off…defacing public property or something, I don't know. I'll ask Emiko-san to start up dinner."

"I wouldn't be averse to the idea," Ken'ichi said, moroseness leaving his expression. "If you would grant us the honor," he tacked on quickly.

"It would be my honor," Takashi said.

Before more formalities could be exchanged Ruka squealed again, loudly, and turned, grabbing up her brother's hands. "I'm gonna go tell Suzaku."

"Who?" Natsumi queried as Ruka took off down the hall.

"Close friend," Asato said quickly, ignoring the annoyed look Takashi was shooting him. Not even the twins had been convinced of Suzaku's existence.

"Perhaps we shall see her tonight," Ken'ichi said, oblivious to the doubt emanating from Takashi. "I'll fetch Shinji. Thank you for having us." Ken'ichi bowed, deeper than was needed. "And for making our son very happy."

Takashi returned the gesture. "We'll see each other soon. If you'll excuse me."

"Natsumi?" Ken'ichi had turned towards the exit as Takashi trailed after his daughter, who could still be heard dimly from elsewhere in the house.

"There's no need for both of us to go back," Natsumi said. "I would like to catch my future daughter-in-law when she comes around, anyway," she added with a laugh. "I'll see you both when you return."

Ken'ichi stole a moment to kiss his wife's hand. "Asato, always a pleasure," he added, nodding to Asato. "Be back soon."

"Take care," Natsumi said, watching Ken'ichi as he made for the door leading to the outside. She turned once he was out of sight and had left her standing in the hallway with Asato. "As he said, it's always a pleasure to see you."

"You, as well." Natsumi and Asato exchanged bows. "It's been awhile."

"Almost two months. I don't think we, as families, have sat down together since the night your brother came home." Asato thought he heard a chord of unease in her voice.

"Has Yuuki been well?" Both families had been surprised when Yuuki elected to live with her parents rather than return to the Tsuzuki household after Daiki had set sail again.

"She's…" Natsumi hesitated, frowning worriedly. "If I may speak plain, no."

"Is it serious?" Asato asked, a bit too anxiously.

Natsumi's gaze swept over him, and then he knew that the past few years hadn't escaped her. "She…seemed to recover from that night, but since then…she hasn't been running a fever, and yet she's been getting ill." Natsumi delicately mimed throwing up with her hands. "And you know how…I'm sure you've noticed that she has a rather fiery personality, but lately she hasn't been like herself. When she isn't angry, she's moping. Shinji is worried, too; he partly asked to rush this marriage so that Yuuki could have a friend with her if he's forced to go away. I'm hoping that getting out of the house and joining in the festivities will do her some good. I have to apologize to your father vicariously; my husband finagled it so dinner would be here, for that purpose."

"It…it isn't a problem," Asato said, his mouth drying out.

"I know that there's no possibility that Yuuki won't come tonight," Natsumi said. "But if she starts to feel unwell…I'll have to ask your father if a room might be set aside, to give her a little privacy."

Her last words had a softly pointed edge to them. Natsumi and Asato made eye contact for a handful of seconds, before she turned to cough, and then smile lightly. "When do you suppose Ruka will make her way back here?"

"Well, she has to let the rest of Japan know, so after she's done walking the country…maybe a few years."

Natsumi had to giggle. "I'm glad to see her so happy. I'm looking forward to this wedding. There hasn't been this much joy in our family since Shinji was born."

"She's been praying for this since she was fifteen."

"And planning for it, I presume."

"Of course. She's kept me up at night talking about it."

"I hope she left a little room for me to put a word in," Natsumi said, though modestly. Her voice softened as she continued. "Weddings are a big deal for the mothers, too." She bit her lip at the look on Asato's face. "I'm sorry…I don't mean to disrespect Aimi-san."

"You didn't," Asato said, swallowing the lump in his throat. "I…we just…wish she was here for this."

"I do, too…I would love to have another woman to commiserate with about our children growing up. That feeling is…it's the most heartbreaking and wonderful experience a person can have, watching this little baby grow to become a husband or wife, and then a parent. I'm truly sorry that your mother didn't get the chance to go through it. I…only met her a few times, when business was still good and she would come up to Tokyo with your father. But I was struck with how…well, wonderful she seemed. She was always so gracious, warm…and she loved you children; you should have heard her go on and on about you." Natsumi smiled. "She was truly a great lady."

"Thank you," Asato said quietly, struggling to speak at all.

Natsumi tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. "I suppose I should go see your father, about that room for Yuuki. Shinji won't wait a second once he hears the news, so they might arrive earlier than expected." She allowed a little laugh in her voice at her son's eagerness. It had been a refreshing change from Daiki and Yuuki's sullen acceptance of their own match when it was proposed to them. "Maybe I'll catch Ruka before she makes it out of town. I will see you later tonight."

"I look forward to it."

"You're next, you know."

"Huh?" Asato looked up from where he had been brooding at the table. Takashi was looming over him, having extricated himself from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the house. "Oh, I'm sorry, I…"

"There's no need for you to stand," Takashi said, staying Asato with a gesture of his hand. As Asato resettled awkwardly back on the floor, Takashi more gracefully sat on another side of the table and cleared his throat. "Now that your sister's engaged, it's time for us to start thinking about your marriage, as well."

"I don't really think I'm that eligible," Asato said, watching his fingers draw imaginary shapes on the tabletop.

"You're seventeen. I was the same age when I married your mother."

"But you had so much more going for you. You were already in charge of the station, and half-in charge of the entire business. And you weren't…well, me."

Takashi made a noise of semi-reluctant agreement. In most respects, abandoning Ageo for Tokyo had worked in their favor, but Asato's existence kept it from being a perfect move. Physical attacks had ended, but whispered rumors and snubs weren't a relished alternative. Luckily, Emiko had, on a trip to visit her family, purposely started the rumor that Asato had turned into his "true form" and been chased from the house, which had improved business somewhat in that town. (Emiko spent a month making Asato all his favorite foods to make up for it, even though she had sworn everyone who heard of it to absolute secrecy and as far as she knew, it had never reached his ears.)

"My pull in the industry might make up for that. It's not as if you're penniless."

"I might be sometime in the future. When Daiki takes over the business, he's not going to waste time making sure I'm shut out." Asato had to suppress the rage he felt whenever Daiki's name was uttered. Takashi didn't bother attempting to protest; the bad blood between the brothers had been almost tangible for the past nine years. "Even if he doesn't, I won't be an asset."

This also Takashi did not contest. Tutors had stomped out of the house threatening to change careers because of Asato. Ruka had been his most effective teacher, but only in the finer feminine arts of dancing and gardening, and in the few phrases of English they had practiced together. But her own education had been biased away from financial matters that dealt outside the domestic sphere, and what she did learn seemed to pass right over Asato's head when she tried to transmit it to him. Takashi had been relieved to see that Asato wasn't stupid, possessing a good head for strategy, but unlike his brothers he had no business sense to go along with it. Agility, strength, and stamina Asato had more than enough of; but laying tracks had long ago been taken care of, and the army was not interested in him, any more than he was interested in the army. Joining the clergy was out of the question.

"Then we'll give it until the end of the war for things to change. If you aren't married and settled into something by then…I'm sending you to England."

"England?"

"I still have friends there who would take you in."

"Permanently?"

"That depends on how you fare while overseas. If you find an occupation, you can choose to stay. If you don't, you will probably at least have learned something to bring back with you. Either way, if by the time you are eighteen there is nothing here for you, it would be best for you to go elsewhere."

Asato looked at Takashi with the eyes of his six-year-old self. "I agree."

Nine years since her death and this had not changed.

Takashi rose from the floor. "I'd make myself more presentable were I you. Our in-laws are waiting."

The first thing Asato noticed when official greetings were over and they sat down to dinner was how radiant Ruka looked, her clothes and hair flawlessly done, as she sat beside her fiancé. Natsumi had dolled her up in such a way that would be hard to top for when the actual wedding rolled around.

The second thing he noticed was how ill Yuuki was. He hadn't been her constant companion for three years to not notice when she pinched color into her cheeks and chewed mint leaves to hide the stench of vomit. She had grown smaller in the two months since she had walked out of his bedroom, not just in weight but in presence. Even her eyes seemed to shrink into their sockets.

Halfway through dinner she asked to be excused. Ruka stood as well, offering to accompany her future sister to the room that had been laid aside for her. Ruka returned after a few minutes, nonchalantly saying that Yuuki was fine, just exhausted. She pinched Asato in the back of the neck as she passed him on the way back to her seat, making his heart drop into his stomach. Between childhood and early adolescence they had created and perfected a system of touches and gestures, a method of annoying their brothers, sneaking around their father, and protecting each other when they were outside among others their age. Two fingers at the nape was the equivalent of an emergency siren.

Asato rushed through dinner and mumbled his excuses. He walked into Yuuki's room as she was straightening up; her rioting stomach had sent her to the window. She wiped her mouth, evidently having no more food to vomit out and instead resorting to spitting up thick saliva.

"I told Ruka not to send you in," Yuuki muttered, leaning against the wall for support and glaring.

"You know better than to think she'd listen," Asato said, his focus not on his words or on the door he was sliding shut behind him, but on the disheveled sight before him. "Yuuki, what on earth is happening to you?"

"I'm just sick, Asato."

"Your mother says you haven't been feverish."

"My mother talks too much," Yuuki said, viciously derisive.

"Don't say that," Asato said, more snappishly than he meant to. "Natsumi-san cares about you. I would give anything to have my mother be around to worry about me."

Yuuki sniffed but was nonetheless sufficiently chastised. "She needn't be so concerned."

"But you've been this way for two months."

"It's nothing a trip to the doctor's won't fix."

"Do you think it's because of Daiki?" He tried to cool his boiling blood. "I mean, God knows what's on those boats. He could have picked something up in Italy and passed it along to you."

Yuuki shrugged, a bit too tightly. "It could have come from him."

Her tone of voice suddenly sent daggers of ice into his innards. He had been almost eight years old when he came across Aimi leaning over a bowl, violently dry heaving as Tomoko held her hair back. Emiko had come across him and, seeing his horrified face, bore him away to the kitchen, where after a cup of calming tea she explained what was causing Aimi's ailment.

"Yuuki, are you…are you pregnant?"

She didn't answer for what felt like hours, instead concentrating on a fleck of paint that had come loose from the wall. After flicking it came to no avail, she pinched it between her fingers and tore it off.

"It's nothing a trip to the doctor's won't fix."

"No." Out of everything his mother had taught him, this one lesson had remained crystal clear in his mind, if only because of the intense, inexplicable shame on Aimi's face as she explained what she called unforgivable. "Absolutely not."

"You don't get a say in this, Asato," Yuuki said quietly, flatly, emotion banished.

"The hell I don't have a say about my own child."

"It might be your brother's."

That felt like a brick to the face. "Is that supposed to change the fact that what you're planning is wrong?"

"I don't agree with that," Yuuki said, her eyes narrowing. "And no matter who the father is, I can't raise his child."

"It's your child, too. You are talking about killing your son or daughter."

"Better that than the alternatives," Yuuki said, instinctively putting her hand to her waist despite herself. "You think Daiki would make a good father?"

"He—"

"Or that I particularly want to raise his spawn?" she interrupted.

"You can't think of a child as a copy of its father."

"Or let's say it's yours," Yuuki said, purposely ignoring his argument. "I'm sure he's just dying to raise something that belongs to his two favorite people in the world."

"He wouldn't know."

"He will if this child has your eyes."

He froze for a second, and then swallowed. "Then…then we won't stay."

"It's not as if the rest of Japan approves of—"

"Not Japan. My father is planning on sending me to England if I can't settle down. He said he'd wait until the end of the war but I don't think he'd object to me leaving earlier."

"He won't be thrilled that his other son's wife takes off with you."

"He won't have to know until we're already gone. It's not as if Daiki's coming home before…" He ran through the months in his head. "December. You could buy a ticket without our families being any the wiser."

"You realize you're proposing cutting ourselves off from our relatives and running away to a foreign country, right, Asato?"

"I would do it in a heartbeat, Yuuki. I can't leave you and a child with Daiki, no matter which one of us the father is."

"And how are we supposed to support ourselves? Between us we maybe know twenty phrases in English. Even if we stay with people your father knows, once they find out what we did I'm sure they'll put us out on the streets. Asato," she said before he could speak, "I don't want to leave. And I don't want this child."

"Then…then…" His mind was racing, flashing through ideas and memories and blurring them together. "Okay, even if all three of us can't stay together, there are people in Japan like my mother. Emiko-san's family wouldn't care if the child had no eyes, and…and I know that she has a sister who can't have children." His eyes began to light up. "When the child's born you could pass it off as stillborn or kidnapped and let Emiko-san give it to her sister."

"I don't see how that could work."

"If you're away from Tokyo when the time comes…" He saw the doubtful expression she flaunted. "Yuuki, please, we can figure something more concrete out as it gets closer. There's so much ti—"

"I don't want to put myself through that."

"Damn it Yuuki, this isn't about you!" His hands shot forward and grabbed her wrists, yanking her towards him but stopping before they made substantial contact, as if their forces of will were both the north side of a magnet. "This is about your child that you're willing to just throw away without second thought!"

"Exactly." Yuuki snapped her arms down, freeing her wrists from his grasp. "And I'm showing more mercy on it than you are."

"How—"

"Do you want someone else to grow up like you did?"

All arguments shriveled up and flew away like moribund leaves in the wind. Time suddenly shot backwards, memories flooding him as clear and real as when they were formed. The first sensation of sickness when "Asato-oni" was introduced as an appellation. Becoming intimately acquainted with the stones that made up the well as day after day water was drawn from it to wash away blood and soothe wounds.

"Because he is not my son!"

"Even if it isn't yours, or doesn't have your eyes, its father would be Daiki. And he'd treat it worse than Takashi ever treated you."

The maelstrom of rocks, the lashings with sticks. The tears running down Aimi's sunken and pallid face, the yellow-green sputum at the corners of her mouth.

The men taking Mommy away.

"God damn you back to Hell!"

"Asato…don't you ever wish that you'd never been born?" Yuuki asked, her voice less cutting into the barrage of images than permeating every second of memory that flashed panoramically through his mind.

Asato looked at Yuuki, into the face of the woman he'd loved for three years, the person he could barely recognize but now saw more clearly than ever. All of a sudden he imagined her gravesite, and his anger and frustration couldn't fight the sheer grief his imagination conjured, as powerful as if it were a part of the present.

He didn't know the answer to her question.

But he did know now that he wasn't going to stop her.

She knew it too, and turned her back to him to pull down the still-open window. She checked her reflection, trying to fix her limp, unkempt hair and slap some color into her face. Reluctantly satisfied with her altered appearance she turned to him, and the soft part of her heart, underneath the layers of rock that she'd been building ever since she'd been married and most eagerly in the past two months, felt some small fraction of the pain she'd immersed him in.

Regret and hesitance crossed her mind. But then she thought of Daiki, and she convinced herself that what she felt was resignation and resolve instead.

"Try to…try to see it this way, Asato," she said as she passed, scooting around him as if touch would weaken her determination. She slid open the door, hanging back for only a second. "We're at least saving an innocent from people who won't love it."

I do, Asato thought, as Yuuki stepped out of the room. Yuuki, please, I love that child, I… But he was frozen, unable to move or speak, unable to do anything but sink to his knees and pray that somehow the doomed child could hear his thoughts.

I'm so sorry.

Yuuki disappeared down the hallway, leaving him behind again and yet somehow taking him along for the ride, next to the other tiny life also about to abandoned in a bloody mess on a cold floor.

He stayed there for what seemed like a hundred forevers, dimly hearing the little voice crying out to be saved ringing in his ears, until delicate footfall somewhat drowned it out.

Ruka stood before him, paler than Yuuki had been, but with make-up instead of pallor. Her hair was still styled up, but her clothes had changed, and instead of the kimono she felt safe to wear to dinner with three rambunctious brothers, she had changed into something Asato had only seen a few times, in the black-and-white photographs Aimi kept in her bedroom. Now freed from the box that had protected it for twenty-one years, Ruka wore the bright white kimono like a queen, or an angel, or whatever Aimi had been.

"Daddy found this in the storage room," Ruka said quietly, turning slightly to show off the delicate patterns stitched in to. "He said that the women in Mom's family passed it down, and that I should give it to my own daughter, if I have one…"

She looked at him, her eyes betraying how much she had been able to ascertain before her hands wiped the evidence away.

"I wish Mom was here."

Ruka had the incantation ready before uttering the one thing she had wanted more than her marriage. Suzaku was summoned before the first tears had slid off Asato's face to land on the floor, appearing as Ruka knelt beside him and threw her arms around his neck, drawing his face into her shoulder.

Suzaku decided that an explanation could come later. She had met them with tears in their eyes and since then her job had been to soothe them, to try to fill in for the mother they no longer had. She sat behind them, placing her hands lightly on the backs of their necks and resting her chin atop Asato's head. Connected through touch, and now through mind, all three thought the same.

I love you, and I want you to live.