Twelve- Weariness

Pale for weariness... of climbing heaven and looking on the likes of us.

I had never really understood, before, how women could be so exhausted after childbirth. Now I knew all too well. To be honest, I could hardly care less if it was a boy or girl or if it was healthy as long as it was out of me and I could go and get some sleep. I let Tamaki handle all that.

"Kotoko," He said, after the doctor told us it was a girl. "Do you hear that? We have a little girl, sweetheart..."

"Uh-huh." I responded. He kissed the top of my head.

Later, we were all together in a little room. I was three-quarters asleep in the bed, half-listening to Tamaki cooing at our little girl. They had told him he could hold her, as long as he took his shirt off first. Something to do with warmth, but I didn't really get it. I listened as he whispered to her, in Japanese and French, though I couldn't catch all the words. We had already decided if it was a girl she would be called Daisy, so that was how Tamaki addressed her. To my surprise, he began singing to her softly.

"Daisy," he almost whispered. "Give yourself away, look up at the rain, the beautiful display of power and surrender, giving us today, when she gives herself away..."

It had something of a haunting melody to it, but it was soothing too. It almost made me fall asleep too, but I forced myself to listen to the rest of the song. I wanted to hear it.

"Daisy, let it go, Daisy let it go, open up your fist, this fallen world doesn't hold your interest, doesn't hold your soul, Daisy, let it go..."

It wasn't a very cheerful lullaby, but the words carried all Tamaki's affection for his daughter in them. I had been right in my previous assumption. She was going to be the most spoilt child in the world.

I had my eyes closed, still in a kind of stupor, and from Tamaki's hushed tones I guess he thought I was asleep. Still, I was perfectly aware when Haruhi and the twins entered. The three of them were practically inseparable nowadays, Hikaru seemingly always with at least one of them. The only times Kaoru wasn't present was when Hikaru and Haruhi were enjoying 'alone time', and the only times Haruhi wasn't present was when she insisted she needed some time to herself- usually to study. So, naturally, they arrived together.

"Congratulations!" The twins yelled, bursting into the room. I shut my eyes more tightly.

"Congratulations, senpai." Haruhi added, more calmly.

"Thank you." He answered. I could hear his smile. "Would you like to meet her?"

Various admiration and cooing sounds. Tamaki shook me gently by the shoulder. "Kotoko. Kotoko, darling, wake up. We have guests."

"Some of the girls in your year brought your stuff up to the club room and asked us to bring it for you." Haruhi was explaining to Tamaki. "Which is how we knew where to find you. Ah, Kotoko-senpai, congratulations! Um..." Here, clearly unsure what to do, she gave me an awkward hug. The twins followed suit, and I got a kiss on each cheek. They'd bought flowers and a balloon. I realised that, as of yet, I hadn't even held her. I asked for her. I held my daughter.

She was too tiny, too perfect. It was almost frightening. Somehow, now I finally held my reason in my arms, I wasn't sure what to feel. What was one supposed to feel in that situation? There she was, little Daisy May. She was only a quarter European, yet her name was. I wondered how prominent that part of her would be. I wondered if she would look like me, or like Tamaki; what her personality would be, how she would change the world. She had to change the world, after all, or why was her being born worth my brother dying? It was too early to tell any of these things yet. My purpose was to care for her. Make her happy.

"Isn't she beautiful?" The proud father asked. She looked a little small and squishy to me. I supposed it would come in time. She was my reason. She would be beautiful.

It may be a cliché to say it, but the truth of the statement has to stand when I say that my life changed when I became a mother. It changed because I became a mother. A Mother was what I was. I felt as if, somehow, that role had supplanted any I had previously held. I had not been an 'Ootori' for a long time. Now, perhaps, 'Kotoko' was going onto the back burner too. I was a Mother, and then a Wife, a Suoh, and everything else somewhere behind that. Then again, 'Kotoko' had never been very prominent to begin with. It is strange to think it now, but at that time, I am quite convinced I had yet to ever be myself.

Not that I knew it at the time. I clung to Daisy with fierce determination, and with all the force for my need for a reason. I still dreamt of my brother, and of my phantom. I saw Kyouya as a child, as a teenager, as an adult. Never older then about twenty, though. Whatever happened to him after that was hidden from me. The fact that having a child had not stopped the dreams after all did not deter me. A Mother and a Wife was what I was. It was what I was meant to be. This is what would justify my surviving when Kyouya did not.

I did not notice it at the time, as I gradually slid into depression. Tamaki was going that way too, and I did not notice that either. It was true we loved our daughter. Tamaki especially doted on her, he was never happier than when he was with her. But we were getting older. School had finished for both of us, one way or the other. Things were changing. By that time we were nineteen or getting there, and already, we were in the roles we would have for the rest of our lives. Tamaki went out each day to work for his family's company. I stayed at home and cared for Daisy, and waited for him to come home.

To be fair to him, Tamaki did what he could. When Daisy was young, and we would be roused in the night by crying, he would take his turn to climb wearily out of bed and go to settle her down again; usually while I lay there wondering what had possessed us to make the decision not to hire a nanny. In the daytime I would remember, when I found I had little else to fill my idle hours, but when we were being awoken at three in the morning, it was a little harder. Sometimes, when it was his turn, Tamaki would manage to quiet her. Other times, just as I was falling back into a doze, he would come and shake my shoulder and explain how he thought Daisy wanted something 'only mommy can give'; at which point I would be forced to sit up, unbutton my nightshirt, and feed her.

Apparently feeding in this fashion was meant to create a 'bond' between mother and child. Not for me. I hated every second and vowed to get her onto bottles as soon as possible, particularly as Daisy seemed to always decide she was hungry when, and only when, I was trying to sleep or it was otherwise most inconvenient. We were advised to discipline her into a more routine feeding pattern, but we had so far been unsuccessful. Still, despite it all, I loved her. My little reason to be.

It seems ironic, looking back, that Tamaki and I had very opposite problems. We loved our daughter, yes, there was happiness with her; but particularly when she was very young, there was an acute kind of disappointment with life as parents. For me, cooped up in the house all day with nothing to do when she was sleeping and only unpleasant jobs to do when she was not- feeding and changing. Somehow, she seemed to take up all my time, and yet, I did not do anything. I was swinging between boredom and obsession. I discussed my misgivings with Tamaki once, in the early weeks, and he assured me it was Post-Natal Depression and it would pass. I was not impressed with this explanation, however, and it did not pass.

For Tamaki, who was out every day, his problem was not being stuck in the house but never getting back to it. Though he was reluctant to complain- in fact, I don't think he ever did, apart from one vivid occasion- it was becoming more and more obvious that his job was not satisfying him. Being the boss' son, he had not had to join at the bottom, but equally, had not had the experience or qualifications to enter in at the top. He had simply been shunted in somewhere at the side, some place where he could get experience to run the company one day, but without causing any major damage with his decisions. It had a lot of paperwork. He was often home late, and even then, would often have to continue by the time we had eaten together.

The days he was late home were the worse. They always took the same pattern. Tamaki came home, exhausted and ready to relax, wanting to see his little girl. I was there, usually having just cajoled her to go to sleep, and stressed from another long and somewhat empty day. On those days, Tamaki did not see Daisy, and usually on my insistence. He was upset, I was angry at being made into the villain. I cried more than once on those days, though I made sure Tamaki never knew.

That is not to say, of course, that every day was like that. There were many happy times, too, probably more than the bad ones. Yet it is the bad ones we remember, isn't it? Even so, there were nice days. On the weekends, on a Saturday, we would go out. We were happy, when she was straining against Tamaki's arms to reach out towards a monkey at the zoo, or playing with some toy we'd bought in the shop. It was on one such outing that she took her first unassisted steps, on the lawn of a manor house we had been going round. After that, she didn't want to stop. When we went to visit Tamaki's father the next day, she spent the entire time walking around in tiny circles, getting up every time she fell. I joked that was the Ootori in her.

There was little else of the Ootori in her. Her hair, when it grew, was soft and blond. She even had his eyes. Every feature was identifiably his. There seemed to be nothing of mine in there, unless it was assumed the slight alterations made to Tamaki's looks came from me. My mother assured me that, as she got older, and lost her baby face, the sharp angles and high cheekbones of my own face would appear. I hoped so. When she was young, it gave me a peculiarly detached feeling. She was so obviously Tamaki's daughter and so unlike me that it almost felt as if I had nothing to do with it. Still, I was her mother, and sang to her 'Daisy' everyday. She never liked it as much from me as when Tamaki did it. Still, though, I was her mother, and was there for every event. There were scary times, like when she learnt to crawl and fell down the stairs; but there were exciting times, like when she said her first word, wonderfully when I was on the phone to Tamaki. Those were special moments.

I loved that little girl. Time passed.

We were going through a bad spell. The weather was unusually warm, despite the fact it had been raining for almost three days solidly. Daisy was seventeen months old. Tamaki and I had not slept together since before we realised I was pregnant. I was fed up of the rain, of Daisy having a cold and being grizzly because of it, of socialising with no-one except Tamaki, who often was worn out from his own work. He was working even then, hunched over the small table in the living room. Fed up of watching him and not getting a word out of him, I withdrew to my study, and tried to read. I was nervous because that was the day I had crashed the car.

We had owned two cars, in those days. Tamaki had learnt to drive before our wedding, but if ever I wanted to go anywhere, I had to ask him to take me. So I hardly ever went anywhere, unless I phoned up the main Suoh estate and got them to send a driver down. That day, on a sudden whim, I had decided it was time I learnt. Tamaki had one of our cars, the one for every day use, but I could use the other one to practise. I knew how to drive, in theory. I had watched other people do it enough, had read on the subject; the only thing I hadn't done was have a lesson. Thus, that day, I went out into a little paved courtyard and tried driving for the first time.

As it turned out, driving was not one of my natural talents. Nor did cars naturally form such a shape around a tree.

The airbags were state-of-the-art, of course, so I was not hurt; and even the tree quite remarkably survived. Just the car was a write-off. Tamaki had rather liked it, and I dreaded him finding out, so I decided not to tell him. Better to wait until he found out for himself, and then explain, or so I thought. I was convinced he would be angry.

That was the reason, as I sat in my study that night, pretending to read but in reality listening to the rain on the windows, I flinched at hearing Tamaki's voice.

"Kotoko!" He was shouting. He sounded angry. "Kotoko, where are you?!"

I wondered if I could pretend not to hear him, but his voice was thundering and I knew even he wouldn't believe it. Besides, this was probably not the best day to push him. Freezing a cold smile onto my face, I went back to the living room. He was still working, somewhat half-heartedly.

"Yes, Tamaki?" I asked, with a slight edge to my voice. "There's no need to shout."

"Yes, there is!" He insisted. "Kotoko, I never see you!"

That had not been what I had been expecting. "...Pardon?"

"I never see you!" He repeated in agitation. "Or, if I do, we never talk! I work too late, or when I come home early like today, I carry on working! I have been a bad husband, Kotoko, but that stops now! I miss you!" Here he threw down his pen, slamming his hand into the desk, and stood up. "We are going out!"

"Pardon?" I said, again.

"We are going out, sweetheart." He repeated, determined, grabbing my hands. "I'll get Shima-san to look after Daisy, and you and I, we... we are going out for dinner! And a movie! And then I'm going to book time off work and we're going to go on holiday, the three of us! We're going to be a couple and a family again!"

"Alright." I said, simply, but my heart hammered. It sounded good. The truth was, I missed him too.

"Go and put on something nice." He smiled at me, and I went.

It was purely an accident that what happened did. I was putting on a fresh skirt, and I noticed my tights had laddered. When I went to the drawer to get some more, I discovered they had all somehow slipped to the bottom, and as I searched, I discovered something I had sworn to burn. I wish I had. Then they would not have stayed there, ready to bring about my downfall. As soon as I saw them, the idea was in my mind. As soon as it was in my mind, there was no way I could resist doing it. And it was as simple as that.

When I returned to the room, wearing my coat but not my shoes, Tamaki was waiting for me.

"Are you ready?" He asked.

I opened the coat and showed him how ready I was. He stared, and blushed. It gave me a strange pleasure that I was still capable of embarrassing him. Even if it did have to be in the form of something shocking and something desperate and something extreme, like this.

"...I don't think they'll allow that in the restaurant." He got out, eventually.

"We are not going to the restaurant." I told him through gritted teeth. I had found a use for the honeymoon lingerie at last, it seemed.

This was different to the other times, somehow. This was not about one another. This time, as we made our way to the bedroom one way or another, it was completely selfish. We were seeking to fill some aching chasm within ourselves. This was not the loving, gentle times we had shared before. This was desperate, frantic; this was need, the need to know there was something more to life than this, to convince ourselves we were in love, to justify our marriage. To drive away the loneliness. There had been so much loneliness, too much. This time we consumed each other, like water, like oxygen, just fighting to drive the feelings away. Seeking to forget. We were driving out demons, recasting illusions, seeking a purpose, seeking pleasure.

"Tamaki," I had said, as we had made it to the bed. "Tamaki, we're not in love." I said it very quietly, so quietly, I couldn't be sure if he heard it or not. I wasn't sure if I wanted him to or not. I assumed he hadn't, but later, he replied:

"We have to be. We have to be."

He said it very quietly. I almost didn't hear. I'm not sure if I was supposed too.

Our second child was conceived on a rainy Thursday, before we had even eaten dinner, in a move of desperation, driven by loneliness, as the rain drummed on the window.

That night, as we lay in bed to sleep, it thundered.

"I hope Haruhi's alright." Tamaki said, because even then, he had not stopped loving her.

I was quicker on the uptake this time. The morning sickness was worse, of course. I marvelled at it. It hardly seemed fair. Daisy had taken so long, and this one was conceived in an instant. It wasn't fair. The whole thing was going to start over again. I would go back to be a Mother. A mother of two, before I was twenty. My father's wish was coming true.

I didn't want to be a Mother.

I didn't want to be a Wife.

I wanted to be Kotoko.

I didn't know what that was.

I didn't want this to be my reason.

I didn't want this to be my reason.

I didn't want to justify Kyouya's death. I didn't want this to be my reason.

Tamaki was quite alarmed when he found me in the bathroom, crying over a pregnancy test. I think, at first, he thought it must have come out negative and I was devastated because at first he reassured me we could have more children. When that made me worse, he quickly re-assessed the situation.

"Kotoko..." He said, gently, carefully, kneeling down in front of me. "You... don't want a baby?"

I couldn't answer.

"Sweetheart, you should be happy." Tamaki tried in vain. "This is a joyful occasion! But... Kotoko... Kotoko, please don't cry..."

"I'm unhappy." I wept.

"Kotoko, Kotoko, darling..." He pleaded. "We... we... I... please... you... y-you can... you can... if you want to," he swallowed hard, and spoke in a half-whisper. "You can abort it. Just... just please, don't cry!"

I stared at him for a moment. I knew what Tamaki thought of abortions. I knew to tell me I could have one would go against every moral he had, every fibre of his being; to him it would be murder and, somehow, the blood would be on his hands. He was probably happy at the prospect of another child. Yet he would tell me that, because he thought I was in pain.

I wished I loved him as much as he deserved to be loved.

"I won't." I said, shakily, forcing myself to stop crying. His sincere concern had knocked all the hysteria out of me. The Ootori was coming back, I was remembering how to control emotion. "I won't, of course I won't. I'm sorry to react like this. I just... we got so distant before."

"Not again." He said. "I promise, not again." He took my hand, and then with his other one, lifted my chin so I had to look at him. He smiled warmly. "Let's make this our new start, sweetheart."

"New start?" I repeated. It sounded so cheesy. Words with nothing behind it, it seemed to me.

"Yes." He nodded seriously. "Kotoko, my father talked about me managing one of the lesser branches of our companies somewhere away from here. I... thought I would reject him... I didn't want to uproot you, and leave our friends, and I thought it would take me away from the 'action' at work, but..." He looked at me, and new determination sparked in his eyes. "But I was wrong! This isn't a token position, Kotoko, it's a job, it matters. And, and, we'll get a new house! One that we chose, together; for the four of us." He considered this statement for a moment. "Five of us." He decided. "We would have to take Shima-san with us, at least. But we'll live there, like that. Like a family. We'll be far away from your parents, and my grandmother, and everyone who has been watching us! We'll... we'll go and see plays on Sundays instead! We'll eat whatever you want to cook, normal food, or when you can't be bothered, we'll go out! Or have takeaway! And... and... we'll put toys in the garden for the children! And a gnome! Okay?"

I couldn't help but laugh at his eagerness. "Okay." I agreed. "You got me on the gnome."

I had believed, when I had first looked at the test, that it would be the final nail in the coffin of my and Tamaki's relationship, as if there would not be enough love and attention to go around, that every piece of love he gave them took one away from me. It was not like that. Instead, if anything, we were revitalised. I felt excited at the future for the first instance in a long time. Tamaki was happy, too. The very next Saturday we started looking at houses. We would be moving to Hoshigo, the little town we had spent our honeymoon in. It was a little way away from where Tamaki would be working, but we wanted to be out of the city, and where better than the coast, where we had made a new start once before?

I wondered then if they would still be performing Shakespeare, barefoot in the sand, with their backs to the sea. I wondered if Caliban was still free, ruling his island once again, or clinging to the railings of the board walk on a sunny afternoon.

I was happy in those days, because my hope had returned. Although the nights were full of my phantom's darkness, in the daylight, the future was bright. Perhaps the second child was my purpose. Perhaps I would find my reason to be with my family, in Hoshigo.

I couldn't wait to get away, far away. Away from my parents, and my memories, away from the Host Club and from Haruhi, away from the maids who knew we had not gone to the restaurant that night and laughed amongst themselves, away from the house I had never felt anything more than a guest or a prisoner in, away from Haruhi. She was still with Hikaru. They seemed alright, though being at University was presenting new challenges for them and their relationship. I wondered if she loved him after all. We would keep in touch, of course, but we were going. Going to Hoshigo, and I was happy.

I had forgotten all about the car. It came back to haunt me, of course, on a day when I was supposed to be going for one of my early check-ups, before my pregnancy even began to show. Tamaki was supposed to be coming with me, but then the phone rang. I quickly picked up from his tone that he would have to go elsewhere.

"It's alright." I said, before he had chance to say anything. "There will be plenty of others."

"...I wanted to come." He pouted, but then said: "Alright, you can use the other car. I'll ask one of the footmen if he can drive you. If you send for one from the main house, you'll be late." He noticed my expression. "What's the matter?"

"Ah, Tamaki, I didn't tell you... I thought you might be angry... but before 'that night', I got bored and... well, I wrapped it round the old oak in the courtyard."

He stared at me for a moment, and then he laughed. "Oh, Kotoko..." He sighed, eventually regaining control. "Never ever go behind a wheel again. But... in the meantime, how will you get there? I'll have to drop you there first and then go to work..."

"There's no time." I said. "It's fine, Daisy and I will go on the bus."

"The bus?" He repeated. "...Commoner transport?"

"Sure." I said. "I have done it before, when I was younger. Besides, you want to ride on the commoner bus, don't you Daisy?"

"Yes!" She answered, and added "Wheee-wow."

As such, it was settled. Tamaki drove off, and Daisy and I waited at the bus stop. She sat happily in her pushchair, as I tried to make sense of the time table. As far as I could tell they were more recommendations then anything else anyway, so I doubted it mattered.

"Car." She declared happily, as the bus pulled up and I manoeuvred our way on board, paying the driver. "Red, car."

"No, Daisy, it's a bus." I told her, wondering how, given Tamaki's commoner fetish, we had managed to leave this gap in her education and experiences. The bus started moving. The suspension was terrible. We were vibrating like the draw-string sheep Tamaki's father had given to Daisy a few weeks before. I wouldn't be making a point of this bus-catching.

"Car." Daisy insisted.

"Bus." I answered. "See all the seats?"

"Lots." She considered.

"That's right. It's a bus."

"Bup."

"Bus."

"Bup."

I should have just left it at that. She was only a year and a half old, after all, and had all of Tamaki's stubbornness. But, of course, I couldn't.

"Bus." I said, and then the world turned upside down.

The car that had caused the bus to brake so suddenly was fine. The brakes on the left side of the bus were faulty. Those wheels did not stop. We span. The bus fell on it's side. It skidded eleven metres because we had been going too fast to begin with. Every window broke. Most of the ceiling and two of the walls crumpled.

I was not aware of any of this. I was not aware of anything for quite some time.

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A/N: Le gasp, oh no. I just don't give her a break. I feel kinda bad about that… but it's not that sort of story. Disclaimer to Ouran and the quotes at the top, which are from Waiting for Godot.

On a note of random trivia, the song in this chapter is 'Daisy' by Switchfoot. If you don't know it, you should Youtube it. :D And yes, Daisy was named that way because of the song. I heard it once when I was writing an earlier chapter, and thought it would suit Kotoko, so… saying that, I always liked the name Daisy anyways.

Next time, what will become of Daisy and Kotoko? It's a Tamaki-centric chapter next time, yup. Thanks for reading!