Title: Living in a Romance Novel
Chapter 6: The Past Unwritten
Authors Note: Sorry for the delay, I have finals this week which means it will be the last chapter I write until May 15th – and then I am free!
Disclaimer: I do not own Fruits Basket or any of the characters. Evalena White is my own creation however, and belongs solely to me.
Nothing's ever done.... No matter what you do, or what you pretend, the past is there. You can't ignore it. ~ JOHN SAUL
"Hey there, Mom. I always promised that I would come and visit you someday. Well, here I am. I brought Iris's. They were in the photo taken with you, so I figured…I figured…" Lena bit down hard on her bottom lip. The physical pain distracted her from the emotional one and she contained the tears. Her hand slowly stopped it's trembling.
With precise and care, she lowered the flowers onto the top of the unmarked grave stone. As soon as Giorou died, she would uproot the entire tomb, fly her mother to American and give her a good and proper burial with a stone that at least held her name on it.
If Mii hadn't over heard Great Uncle Giorou and Great Aunt Fujiko talking, she never would have found Sora's grave, or her fathers.
As a cruel joke, Daichi's grave was all the way on the other side of the cemetery. In life and death, they're punishment was to always be separated. His too, she would fight the rights for with a blood test and DNA sample and have him flown to America.
They would be together, someday.
Until then, she couldn't warrant a test, not with Fujiko still alive. Lena swore the old woman took in each breath out of spite at Evelena's existence.
"I'm proud of you mom, you and dad both. The first scandal in the Okamura family tree, and I'm the product of it. You sure know how to pick the worst guy who's the best for you," she laughed and a small tear slid down her cheek. "I wish I could have seen Giorou's face when you defied him, he probably resembled a steam engine with smoke piling from his ears. Over in the corner Fujiko was faking a heart attack as she clutched her chest and groaned. Well…" Lena's lip played with a smile on her face, "Actually, I was there."
She had been there, and that single idea had Lena cracking up. Her laughter bubbled forth in an un-proper manner being at the edge of a cemetery. Her knees hit the ground and although Lena knew heavy grass stains would ruin the nylon panty hoe's, she didn't care. A petite hand covered her hand as she laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
That's how Sora would have wanted her daughter to grieve.
"Miss…are you alright?" a concerned voice rang out and Lena felt a hand touch her shoulder softly.
Lena identified the girl immediately; she never forgot a face and especially one that always had bows in her hair.
"Honda-San," Lena's cheeks were tinged red with embarrassment as she stood up and straightened out the black lacy skirt. She smoothed out the wrinkles in the cream button up shirt with the high lace collar and the button over black jacket she wore.
"Call me Tohru," she insisted in a sweet manner and helped to brush off the blades of grass and beads of dirt that clung to Lena's nice outfit.
"If it's not rude to ask…why are you here, Tohru?" Lena asked as her eyes sharpened on the girls' large brown eyes. At first glance, she seemed to be all smiles, a bright and energetic girl. That was her cover, and just like a sappy romance could hide a tragedy – there was more to see in Tohru's face. Her face was just a little sunken in, paler than what was considered healthy and her hair held a dull shine to it. There were slightly dark rings around her eyes and a hollowed look about her when Lena looked very closely and examined her.
Clearly, she was grieving.
"Oh, no it's fine to ask," Tohru's smile dropped for half a second, "I'm visiting Mom. It's her one year anniversary from the car accident. I was with friends, but they left to give me a moment alone."
"It gets easier," Lena gave her a reassuring smile, "the empty feeling, that doesn't go away and you never stop looking, but it gets easier. You miss them less, you stop wondering about them less, stop praying less. Your life never returns to normal, but there's a healthy bargain you make to continue on in the world without the ones you love," as a child, Lena had always wondered about her parents.
"You're visiting family?" Tohru asked with hesitation.
"Parents, emphasize on the plural," Lena smiled bitterly, "Mom's right here, Dad's way over on the other side of the cemetery," because they came from cruel, dominating families who stuck there noises up in the air.
"I'm…" it seemed to Tohru in that instant, that although her mother had left her, she was together with her husband now. Tohru had friends, the best in the world to help her carry the burden. Evalena White had no one except the German Shepherd that whined at her heels.
"It's alright, I've got Prince. He's all the family I've ever needed," Lena laughed and stroked her dog fondly. His giant tongue rolled out of his mouth and rolled over the ground, enjoying the attention.
"How long has it been?" Tohru finally asked, how long had Lena lived alone?
"Oh, I suppose my birthday is in two weeks, that will be the anniversary, I don't know the exact day, but it's around there when both of them were killed."
"K…Killed? You make it sound like a murder," Tohru's face went whiter than before as she tried to laugh off Lena's words.
"It was," Lena said simply, "A terrible murder, covered up by money and power to look like Sora Okamura had died in pregnancy and then Daichi Sohma shot himself in grief," the temper lashed with the words as the wind picked up. Lena spit out the last name Sohma and never noticed how Tohru's eyes rounded in shock.
"S…S…Sohma?" she gasped.
"Aye, Sora was the first Okamura to have an out of wedlock affair. She was engaged to a man she did not love and ran away. Only eighteen, she got as far as the woods and then wandered around aimlessly, becoming lost. A storm hit and she became wet, sick and in dangerous shape. Daichi Sohma found her and took her inside the main Sohma residence. He hid her from the world, kept her save and helped gain back her health, of course they fell in love and like all the great love stories, their love was doomed from start to finish," Lena sighed and took a seat on the bench.
"If I'm going to tell the story, I need to start from the beginning of my life, have a seat," she patted the bench down and Tohru sat with wide eager eyes to hear the tale.
"I was raised in St. Marcus's Orphanage, the middle of New York City. As far as Orphanage's go, I had a nice one but was never put into foster care. As a child I was already intelligent and knew stories of foster cares, I scared off every parent that came near me. The Orphanage sent us to a nice school, but because I had astounding scores and a gift with the pen I was allowed into Little Brown's Elementary School for Girls, private and very affluent. It was bound to happen sooner or later, a history project on your family history. I had stellar marks, and born with a natural curiosity. At the age of fifteen the dreams of my parent's true identity varied from week to week. One minute father was a handsome solider who died protecting the innocent and good hearted and then he was a savvy shark-like lawyer, but Mother was always a novelist," Lena waved her hand and sighed.
"Am I boring you, yet?" she asked with brief hesitation. Once she started to roll with a story, it was hard to stop.
"Oh, not at all! Please continue," Tohru insisted.
"Alright," Lena smiled and then went on, "I dug, and dug and dug in research. I even broke into the filing system at the orphanage, which at age fifteen was forbidden. There was very little about me, only that I came from an Okamura family in Japan. So, I called them up," Lena gave a light laugh as the fond memory returned, "They were…shocked to hear from me, as you can imagine. I believe Old Fujiko screamed in the background. Of course Giorou denied everything right then and there, but his brother, Arata, my grandfather explained it was far more dangerous for me to know absolutely knowing and be filled with curiosity then to know the truth…half the truth at least. He got on the phone and explained how he, and his German wife Marleen had one daughter, my mother, Sora. He told me how Sora was engaged to Daichi Takashima and that I was born as Kanae Okamura but Sora had died in childbirth and Daichi had murdered himself in grief. They explained because of the pain, they had to send me away. I looked far too much like my mother. If Arata had truly known me, he wouldn't have lied, and he wouldn't have allowed my cousin, Mii, to continue contact with me," Lena folded her hands on her lap and gave a grim smile.
"That's horrible!" Tohru protested immediately, "To not know your family until you were fifteen, and then to be lied too. It must have been so hard for you."
"It was, but I had writing and the pen to make up my own happy ever after back then. I kept contact with Mii who began to dig around in our family history. She found out through Marleen in her last hours of life when she became delirious and started to talk about Sora and how if they had played their cards right, they might have married into the Sohma's. After Marleen passed away, Arata drank a lot and Mii learned even more as she probed him for answers whenever he became intoxicated enough. It was how I learned of the burial, and how he kept muttering that Fujiko and Giorou were wrong to take lives that were not there's to take. He too complained how they might have had a chance to be related to the Sohma's if only Daichi hadn't had a brother, Hodaka…but then he died and it was the last information I ever found from Arata, but not the last information found."
"What does Daichi's brother have anything to do with this?" Tohru asked, she was caught up in the story, like Jenkins had been, the only other person to ever fully hear the story about Lena's past.
"Well, he was the reason they lived inside the Sohma residence and why Daichi could never leave, for some reason he had to be with his brother. It was why when he tried to leave with Sora there was a big uprising in the family. The Sohma's threaten the Okamura's, the Okamura's threatened the Sohmas…it was a big power clash between the two family's all because of love…too Romeo and Juliet for you?" Lena asked with a twisted smile.
The modern day Montague's and Capulet's of Japan.
"How terrible to be torn away from the one you love," Tohru gushed, "Sora must have been devastated."
"She was, and mourned in her room, refusing to come out. Her cousins Eiji and Kimika ran food to her, because she was secretly feeding for two. One of the things that Mii shipped to me was an old diary kept of the events in that room. For one thing, Fujiko kept her locked in the room, and when she found out she was pregnant…" Lena sighed, "My life nearly finished before it had really started. Arata had to pull Fujiko off Sora and explain that the murder of an innocent child was wrong and I was not too be punished for Sora's sins. All of this was in the journal Mii sent to me. There are pages ripped out, pages that I know held valuable information that Sora knew, information too precious to be left on paper," and it had almost been hers.
The entire Okamura family was a scandal, with runaway teenagers who came back pregnant, black mailing back and forth along with pay offs to the Sohma family and then there was little Lena…
"I was born Kanae Moka Okamura, and then I died. The Okamura's erased my name from their family history, told the world I was still born and then shipped a baby girl illegally to New York with no name, no tags, only the blood in her body to identify her as an Okamura. The nurse maid named me Evalena Aurelia White, because I came in a lacy white baby carriage in a satin pink dress and bow's in my hair…I looked like royalty and deserved a fitting name. They had a red bow in my hair, and at the time my hair was darker but lightened over the years. She thought I looked like a baby version of Disney's Snow White, and thus the last name, I began my life at the orphanage and thus we come full circle of our tale," Lena stopped talking, there was nothing to say and her throat was now red and scratchy from telling a long story.
Prince's tail thumped at her feet as she ran her hands through his smooth fur. When Lena looked over, Tohru had tears coming from her eyes.
"Why are you crying?" she asked wearily, "It's not that sad of a story."
"But it is!" Tohru insisted, "If you love someone, you should be able to be together. What ever happened to Daichi, why didn't he come and rescue her?"
"This isn't some fairy tale, I don't know what happened to Daichi, maybe he thought she was a good one time fling, maybe he truly loved her but was kept locked inside his own nest…or maybe he truly did shoot himself. I don't know," the last words were pure frustration; Lena hated the mystery not being solved.
"Someday, I hope you find out," Tohru replied as she stood up. Over the hill and past the grave markers there were two boys fighting, literally.
"I better go…" Tohru gave a worried look over at them and began to quickly walk off, "Thank you for the story and telling me more about yourself, Lena. You should come over for dinner some time, I'm sure Shigure would like that."
Lena gave a slightly wolfish grin, "You know, I might just have to take you up on that offer."