Fourteen- Decision
But you have to decide.
Grief is a funny thing. It seems to take all the time in the world, and let you lose track of all of it. After that first day, I did not cry again. I was finished with crying, I had done far too much of it already. I longed to be a cold Ootori again, and care about nothing. Tamaki tried to get me to talk to him, but he could offer me no more comfort than I could offer him, so we stopped trying. I decided to forget about Daisy and the baby that would have been our new start. We didn't talk about moving any more. We didn't talk about anything much. What was there to be said?
I was in hospital for several weeks. Eventually, when I was waking up for longer and more predictable periods, Tamaki did not stay at the hospital with me, coming within visiting hours like everyone else. It gave me a lot of time to think, and to stew. I was back to square one. I had no idea what my purpose was. But I had to have one. Otherwise, my brother had died for no reason.
Looking back on it, I wonder why I ever thought like that; why I felt, because he had died and I had not, that I somehow owed him a debt. I suppose it was the dreams. Seeing a whole life like that, you can't help but feel that theirs is more worthwhile than yours. In the hospital, that was the worst time for such feelings. I didn't have my children. My husband didn't love me, would never love me, couldn't love me, no matter how much he tried, no matter how much he lied to himself about it. I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing here, what difference I was supposed to make, what I was for. I just wanted to go home. But I didn't know where that was. It wasn't my parent's house, nor was it Tamaki's. I had no home. I fit in nowhere, because I was not meant to be. At least, not like this.
But there had to be a point. Otherwise, why was I here?
Even in the hospital, I dreamt of my brother. I saw him at my age. I saw him on perfectly average days when he did nothing but go to school, run the club, study and sleep. I saw him on more important occasions, on birthdays, on valentine's day. I saw the day the girl Tamaki teased him about had given up on him ever noticing her and then he kissed her. I heard tender words, then, and I saw words of love. It was different to the exchanges between Tamaki and I. It was nothing frilly, or over the top, just what was necessary. I think he would rather not have said anything. The fact he did made it all the more special.
Over the years since I had first seen him, I felt I had gotten to know my brother and his quirks. Some were like mine. Others were very different. I liked him. I only wished I could speak with him, meet him properly, see what he thought of all this. In the hospital, when I had nothing else to do, a kind of yearning began in me. That world, the one I could only access when asleep, seemed so much more real to me than my own world, so much more vivid and alive. I wanted to go and watch that place, although I could never go in, never do more than peep through the windows. I drank in it. My phantom scared me with his judgements and dares and accusations, but I didn't care about him. He would show me my brother, and that was all I needed from him. I wished I could have known Kyouya, and his life, and been a part of his world. Sometimes, when I was awake, I tried to picture what life would have been like had we both survived. I wondered if we would have been close.
Seeing how Kyouya was with other people, and knowing my own personality, I doubted my twin and I would have been as insular and as caring as Hikaru and Kaoru by a long way. I would imagine we would have lead rather separate lives. But it would have been Kyouya who was friends with Tamaki, who was in the Host Club, and had our parents suggested a marriage between Tamaki and I perhaps Kyouya would have said to him 'No, I refuse to be related to you, stay the hell away from my sister'.
It was possible. More likely he would have passively accepted it, unless I admitted I was upset. Then he would have done everything he could, unseen, always unseen, to stop this happening to me. I was sure of that. I wished he had lived all the more, but it seemed there was only room for one of us in the world.
One day, when I suppose I must have seen reasonably well-balanced, Tamaki dared to ask me who I had been shouting at when I had accused someone of killing our children. I looked at him for a long moment, and then I told him. I told him first of my dead brother, and of the dreams, and of my phantom. He was troubled. I was beyond caring, because I was disturbed.
That night, when I was sleeping, unknowing, at the hospital and seeking Kyouya, Haruhi got woken by a call from a bar. They wouldn't let Tamaki drive home. Tamaki, who had never been drunk in his life, who disapproved of bars, who never gave in, who smiled even when it rained so hard the flood should have drowned him. He was beyond being able to drive. Haruhi, however, couldn't drive at all, so she was forced to call Hikaru. He went to pick Tamaki up, but he was not happy about it.
"What the hell are you doing to yourself, Tono?!" He said, furiously, as he drove. "What are you thinking?! You've never pulled a stunt like this before, why now?!"
"Because they're gone!" Tamaki had shouted back. "Daisy and our new start have gone! And Kotoko's gone too!"
"You're drunk." Hikaru sighed in anger. "Kotoko is fine, Tono, they'll let her out soon."
"No she's not!" Tamaki replied. "She's alive, but she's gone! She's gone somewhere I can't reach her, and I sent her there. I tried so hard to love her. I've been killing her all along."
"...You're really drunk."
"I don't know what to do."
Hikaru didn't know what to say, so he went back to lecturing Tamaki instead. "So you decided to go and drink yourself into oblivion, is that it?! I know you're going through hell right now, but..." And on he went, and on. Anything to fill the silence. Anything to stop Tamaki thinking about what he had lost. No-one wants to see pain like that, and know they can't do anything.
Poor Tamaki. He tried so hard to save me. By the next day he was back to his usual self, smiling for me, pretending everything was fine, for me. Everything was far from fine.
Eventually, they let me out of the hospital. They wanted me to go in for counselling, but I said no. My mind was my own, and I was not letting anyone in except my brother who crept in through my dreams. Besides, I just wanted to go home. I couldn't, because I didn't have one per say, but I could go back to Tamaki's place and anywhere was better than that hospital that smelt of death and had my phantom lurking in it's dark corners.
Tamaki did his best for me, of course. He had already gone back to work. Between home and the hospital there was too much to remind him of what he had lost and what he had never had. In the last week or so, he had thrown himself back into work with gutso, with renewed vigour. It was so he didn't have to think, so he did not have to remember. Still, he tried. He offered to take a day off that first day I had back at home. When he knew how that day would end, I think he would wish he had. When I didn't reply to his questions, he just sighed, and kissed my forehead. I was still lying in bed when we said goodbye.
"Goodbye, sweetheart." He said. "Don't strain yourself."
He waited for a response. None came. I could no longer stand the sight of him. "Are you sure you don't want me to stay at home?"
I shook my head. It would make no difference that day.
"Kotoko..." He began. Wanted to say something more but didn't know what it was. So he just sighed, and kissed my forehead, and left quietly.
I do not blame Tamaki for what happened next. It must not be forgotten that he was grieving too. He had lost as much as I had, and he could do nothing. If I was suffering, he was having to watch me suffer and know he could do nothing to change it. He tried so hard to be strong for me, at a time when he had barely enough for himself. I don't know what he would have done without Haruhi. If I had been half-decent as a wife, I should have been supporting him even as he supported me. But I did not. I retreated into myself, let him carry his burdens alone. I did not see that he was struggling to carry them, I did not see them at all. He made a point of not letting me see.
I wish I could have been as strong as that. I don't know how he did it. Even with Haruhi, always ready to visit, never more than a phone call away, he was very strong. He weathered the storm, somehow. I crumbled away.
That first day wasn't so bad. I stayed in bed for most of it. Finally Shima-san came in and said, most firmly:
"Get up, Kotoko, this won't do, you were lucky to survive, so don't throw this away!"
She practically dragged me out of bed that day. We ate a meal together, out on the grass at the back of the house. We walked around the grounds. The wind felt nice on my face. On that day, I almost believed I could dare to live.
Shima-san had not used a suffix on my name, I noticed. She was very kind.
The second day was worse. My father honoured me by taking an afternoon off to come and visit me. I daresay he even tried to comfort me, in his own way. He said to me, "Don't worry. There will be other children."
That got me. There will be other children. It was unavoidable. Inescapable. Inevitable. There would be other children, and more after that, and if they all died then we would just have some more. This was my life. It was a cycle. I knew, somehow, that any other children that came from me would die too. The child that had died in my womb would make sure of that. Death was inside me now, and once it was there, there was no escaping it. It was there, inside me, all the time, and inescapable.
I told my father I felt unwell and he took his leave. I was unwell. My spirit was sick, my mind was sick, my body was half-starved and refused to keep any food down. I believed, at that time, that death was inside me. My brother had died, my children had died, everything died. The world was not supposed to be this way.
The world, I realised, was never meant to have me in it.
I tried to push the thoughts away at first. Perhaps I had not yet found my reason, but many people hadn't, never did. I was only seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen. I was barely twenty. I had time. There was still time for me. There had to be.
But I was scared, so scared, that there wasn't, that there was no reason, that I had been a waste of a life and that my brother would have been so much better. I had taken him from the world and had not even been able to give it anyone to replace him. Then there was the time on the honeymoon, when I dreamt him, he dreamt me, he had seen me. I had usurped his place in this life. The world kept trying to snap back to how it should have been, but I was there, blocking it, keeping this world alive. A sad world, where Tamaki and Haruhi were forced apart, where my brother did not exist, and the things he would do did not happen. It was a sad world. Death was inside me.
I went into a sort of panic that day. I began to wonder, if I was there, if I was real. There was no purpose to my existence, my brother had seen me, maybe I was not really there. This was never supposed to have happened, the world was not really meant to be like this. I moved around the house, restlessly, searching desperately, for any sign, for anything that might have anchored me to that realm.
There was nothing. Not one thing. I looked for Daisy, and I could not find her. Everything of hers, all the clothes and the toys and the high chair and the little brushes and the child locks on the windows and the gates on the stairs, all had gone. They had thought it would be kinder to remove it all before I came home. Daisy had been buried before I woke up. Tamaki had donated her organs to save someone else's child, half of her had been buried, half of her had been ripped out. He had cried, had been alone. Now I was alone. There was no trace of her. Not a single thing to suggest that little girl had ever existed. I wondered if I had dreamt her, just as I was being dreamt. If she had never existed, perhaps I never had. Perhaps I was never supposed to have been.
It made me understand. At last, I understood. I had no purpose, I was a problem. If I was not here, Kyouya would have been. The world would have been what it was supposed to have been. If I was not alive. If I was dead.
That was all it took. That one tiny thought slipped into a crack in my mind, and spread, took it over, went into every last gap. If I were dead, things would be better. I would not be alive, to think and to feel and to dream and hurt and to anger to err and to die. If I were dead. If I were dead, there would be room for Kyouya again. If I were dead, Tamaki marry Haruhi like he hadn't even realised he wanted to. If I were dead, there would be no more children to lose. I could escape that inevitability. If I were dead, Kyouya's life would take over, the world would snap back to the one that contained him, and all that living. If I were dead.
After the bus incident, Tamaki wanted to ensure that I would never have to take one again. He had replaced the car I had smashed, and I took it. I ran from the room, down the stairs, my knees gave way in the entrance hall but I got up again and I ran to the car, started the engine, slammed my foot down on the pedal. I wasn't worried about hitting anything this time, I didn't take much care, it didn't matter that I didn't really know what I was doing, that I had no licence, that I was speeding, that my eyes were blinded with tears. I knew nothing could go wrong. Not now. Nothing more would go wrong because I was finally doing something right. My phantom was in my mind although I was awake.
"Yes," he was saying, alluringly, excited. "Yes, that's right. This way. This is your reason, Kotoko!"
Nothing would stop me. I was going to Hoshigo. It was to have been the place for our new start, it would do just as well for an end when I was dead. I drove, hardly noticing what I was doing, where I was going. I felt as if I could feel myself slipping away from this world already, and taking all the death inside me with me. I was saving the world. Once I was gone, it would be fine. This was my reason. At last, this was my reason.
I reached Hoshigo, abandoned the car in a field somewhere, got out. I wasn't wearing any shoes. I had come out without them, without noticing. Oh well, it was one less thing to dump in the sea. I knew where I was heading, the cliff, just up from the cottage we'd stayed in that time. We had walked there some days. I ran there now. The grass and the air and the earth were still. Only the ocean moved, stirring itself up, ready. The cliff was woody. On a normal day I might have noticed the damage the stones and twigs did to my feet. I was not on the path, I was beyond any need for paths, having spent this long trying to forge my own. Below me was the beach, I could see it sometimes between the trees, the beach where they had acted Shakespeare on the beach, barefoot, with their backs to the sea. Caliban had jumped and clung to the railings. The metal had been cool on my skin.
I climbed.
The earth was between my toes. Dry on top, baked by the days of sun it had enjoyed, but damp and spongy underneath from some forgotten rainfall. For the first time in my life, I wanted to run. I wanted nothing more than to run right to the top of that cliff and carry on going. Now I finally knew what to do. This was all I could do. Not just for him, but for Tamaki, too, and Haruhi, and to put the world back to rights. A life for a life.
"This is it," my phantom whispered in my mind, breathless with excitement. "That's right. This way. This is your reason."
Even standing there right at the top of the cliff, there wasn't much wind. A good omen. One more step, and the world would be how it should be. Without me in it.
If my story had been a normal one, Tamaki would have arrived then and saved me, and as I fell into his arms, I would realise he did love me, and I did love him, and had always loved him and would always love him and all the scars of my life would disappear like ice in the sun. But my story was not a normal one. I was half-a-person, not even real, never meant to be of this world, and something like that could never have happened. Not that Tamaki didn't try, of course. As soon as Shima-san realised I had disappeared, she had phoned him and he had somehow known where I would go. He ran for his car, like I had, and headed for Hoshigo, as I had. He was barely ten minutes behind me, but that time was enough. He was destined to be too late.
It was peaceful, on top of that cliff. My phantom, who had been pressing me the entire journey, finally fell silent. My reason was on small step away, and then the world could take one giant leap, and get back to how it was supposed to be. I looked at the sea one more time. I thought of the sand between the toes of the actors, and my feet left ground.
For a moment, I thought I was falling. But I wasn't, someone had grabbed me, was dragging me away from the cliff edge, away from my reason. A man I didn't recognise, about my age. I struggled against him, furiously, desperately, but it was no good.
"Let go!" I shrieked. "Let go! Let go of me! Let go!"
"No!" He shouted back. "Why am I going to let go?! So you can throw yourself off?!"
"Let go of-!" I started again. I had manage to drag him one step up the cliff, we were back on the summit.
And at the top stood Kyouya. He was watching the sea. He turned, and saw me. We stood, still, not moving. For an irrational moment, I thought he was alive, somehow, that he was really here. Then I realised, no, this was another dream. I was seeing through the veil between our worlds again. This time, however, he was looking back at me.
"You again." He said, eventually, closing his eyes. "Who are you? What do you want from me? All my life, I've seen you. What do you want?"
And suddenly, I understood. All this time, as I had dreamt of him, he had dreamt of me. He had seen me, all those times in his life I was witness too. Just once, on my honeymoon, he had seen my life. I wondered what he thought. He was not as easily persuaded as me. I didn't know what to say.
"I have no patience for ghosts." He said, impatiently. "And I certainly don't know how to lay them to rest. If you're just a figment of my imagination, I have even less patience for that."
He knew who I was, but not what. I was no more a ghost than him. We were just never made to walk the same road.
"I'm not a ghost." I said, finally.
"Then what are you?" He asked.
"...Just a dream." I answered, and opened my eyes. I saw one last image of him, the woman, his girlfriend, approaching behind him, as my vision cleared. I was propped up against a tree. The man that had pulled me back was crouched in front of me, looking slightly confused.
"Are you alright?" He asked. "You fainted for a minute there."
I said nothing. I was too busy thinking. My mind was clear, it was as if the light had been switched on. My phantom, and all that darkness, had been chased out of it. I didn't know what I had been thinking.
The man looked at me, with mixed emotions. I don't think he knew what to think.
Tamaki arrived just then, too late. "Kotoko!" He shouted, running, breathless. He fell on his knees before me and pulled me close.
I hugged him back, grateful for his care and his friendship, and wondering how I ever saw him as anything but a brother, let alone sleep with him. I had been so desperate, and half-mad, in those times, I realised. He was asking me why I had done such a thing, why I hadn't spoken to him, telling me how sorry he was. I waited for him to finish, patting his back.
"I'm sorry, Tamaki." I said. "I'm alright now."
He looked at me, unconvinced. He seemed even more unnerved when I attempted a wavering smile. He got to his feet, turned to the man who had saved me, and embraced him. I suppose he must have seen us grappling. "Thank you." He said, over and over. "Thank you so much!"
"Um, that's okay?" The man offered, obviously uncomfortable. I wanted to laugh at his expression, but to be honest, I wanted to laugh at anything, and to cry. I was giddy with too many emotions swirling around inside me. Tamaki, meanwhile, had finally let go of him, took a step back, and bowed deeply.
"Thank you." He said again, quietly. "Thank you for saving my wife."
It seemed as good a time as any, so I inturrupted. "About that. I want a divorce."
Tamaki stared. The other man seemed uncomfortable, but Tamaki was blocking the way back down. He couldn't leave.
"Kotoko, sweetheart..." Tamaki pleaded. "What is all this about?"
I considered what I could tell him. I could have told him everything, about my phantom, and my sudden realisation. He might have wanted me to choose death, but now I knew differently. Any purpose I had in this life, I would make for myself. My meaning was not there, waiting to be found, I had to build it with my own two hands, with the bricks I wanted, in the way I wanted. If I was going to make up for my brother dying, I had to live my life. It was that simple. I wondered how I hadn't seen it.
But all that would have taken far too long to explain. So I smiled at him, and slipped my ring off. I took his hand for a final time, and wrapped his fingers around it.
"We should never have gotten married." I said, gently. "You know it. So give this to her."
Tamaki looked at me for a long time. As always, his expressions were clearly displayed in his eyes. I watched patiently as he slowly made his way through them. I felt as if I had finally become a part of the world, and I had all the time in it. Finally, he shook his head.
"...No." He said, and gave me the ring back. "It's worth a lot of money, Kotoko. Take it."
I smiled. He had realised what I intended to do. He had realised I'd need a little money to get me going in a commoner lifestyle.
"And... and I'll make sure you get a fair settlement." He added.
"I don't want your money, Tamaki."
"Take it anyway."
I said nothing, just smiled. I squeezed his hand, and turned to leave.
"...Is this really it?" He asked, unable to give up quite that easily. He had spent years building up resistance to treacherous thoughts. Those defences could not crumble automatically. "Kotoko, darling, it doesn't have to be like this. We'll do better. We'll move. We'll do whatever you want; things will get better."
I just looked at him. Finally, he couldn't meet my eyes any more. With a sigh, I stepped towards him again, forced him to make eye contact.
"One way or another, Tamaki, we can't go on like that. We should never begun that. Go home." I went to leave, but he pulled me back, hugged me one last time.
"...G-goodbye, Kotoko." He whispered, and though his voice cracked with emotion, I knew he would be just fine. I let him hold me, and I held him, for just a moment longer. Then I let go.
"See you, Tamaki." I answered, and walked away. I did not look back. The ground felt good beneath my feet. A wind began to blow from the sea, it caught my hair and tossed it into my face. I didn't care. I got a little way, and started to laugh. I laughed, unable to stop, I laughed until I cried, I laughed and cried at all this love and loss, all the while, stumbling along. I daresay I had never looked so mad. Perhaps that was why the man followed me, full of concern.
"Um... miss? Are you going to be alright?"
"I'm fine!" I said, happy. "I'm better than fine, I'm free!"
"Right." He replied, not convinced. "...Do you have a place to stay?"
"No." I said, unconcerned with such trivial things. "Oh well!"
"...I work in a bed and breakfast, you can stay there."
"I don't have any money!" I warned him, cheerfully.
"You don't even have any shoes. I guessed." He answered dryly, and took my arm to direct me. I followed, because I knew I could leave if I wanted to.
"Hey, what's your name?" I asked my guide.
"Ayumu." He answered.
"Ayumu." I repeated, testing the sound. "Is there a surname to accompany that?"
"Nope." He said. "You're Kotoko, right? Is there a surname there?"
"Not any more!" I said, and laughed.
I was mad that day, but I was reborn and renewed and refreshed and reinvigorated, and all the good re-s, though most of them I don't think I had ever been before. The dark stains of my past had been far from eradicated, lasting happiness was still a long way off for me. But, that day, I was elated. I laughed and cried from some extreme of emotion I couldn't name. I think I was, for the first time, feeling like myself.
There was a lot still to come, but I allowed myself to be lead down that cliff with a hand around my arm that had once clung to a metal railing and covered the salt stains.
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A/N: An early update, because there's a lot going on tomorrow and I don't think I'll remember. Disclaimers as always.
Le gasp, what was that?! I think we just had a happy end- oh, no, wait, there's another chapter to go. (thunk) But I think it would be a little disappointing to end there, don't you? I mean, as if I could let Kotoko get over everything that easily, hahaha. I'm not that nice. There's a lot more to come for her yet…
On a note of random trivia, this chapter was originally going to come before the wedding. Seriously. The original idea was that the night before the wedding she would have a dream of what married life with Tamaki would be like, and hate it so much she was driven to, well, the prologue. But then I had so many ideas for the dream, well, this was the result. Funny how things turn out.
So, one more chapter. I think it would be mean to leave it for too long, and certain people are going to Egypt, so the last chapter will be posted on Monday. Please join me then! :D