Character(s): Yagyu Nasutei

Warning(s): Referenced, canonical character death.

Of Wine And Promises

Every year, on the day of her birthday, Nasutei follows the same ritual.

She takes a bottle of wine out of the cellar, usually a red wine though sometimes she'll settle for a white one, and she takes two glasses out of the cupboard in the kitchen. Fancy glasses, not your run-of-the-mill ones, please, because this is a special occasion. She pours two drinks, her gestures slow and measured as to not spill a drop. Then she puts the bottle down and carry the drink up the stairs and into her office.

She sets them on the table, next to a framed portrait.

And she doesn't touch them.

At all.

She just sits at the table in front of one of the glasses and looks at the portrait, the frozen image of an old man with a kind smile, resting his hand on the shoulder of a young girl who couldn't have been more than thirteen.

Grandfather had always been a kind, understanding man, Nasutei muses, chin in her hand as she remembers the day this picture had been taken, and the promise he had made her with utmost seriousness. One of her older cousins had turned twenty, and the grown-ups had all shared a toast, but Nasutei had been excluded. Too young, she had just toasted him with a fruit juice, pouting all the while until Grandfather put a hand on her shoulder.

"When you're old enough, we'll share a drink together on your birthday, Nasutei."

He had sounded so serious, but his eyes had been creased with laugher and tenderness.

It still makes her smile despite the sadness and bitterness she has gained since that one spring day. Grandfather had been so sure he'd still be here for her by the time she was an adult… and he would have been, without the Youja's invasion.

A drink with Grandfather…

It had been something she had looked forward to, for all she had… cheated. Just a little.

Technically, Nasutei has been drinking alcohol since long before reaching legal age. Oh, no-one decent or law-abbiding would sell alcoholic drinks to a minor, but… It wasn't rare for her to take a sip from one of her parents or relatives' glass at a party as she grew up in France. It's not an uncommon practice, but she doesn't think Grandfather would have appreciated if Nasutei had told him.

For him, his granddaughter shouldn't have been drinking anything fermented before reaching the proper age of adulthood according to Japanese standards.

It's one of those little legal difference between France and Japan – age of adulthood, and age to legally smoke or drink. Eighteen in France, twenty in Japan; a difference of two years that doesn't mean much to an adult but can feel like forever to a child. Nasutei had grown torn between the two, wondering what rules she should follow, further complicated by the fact that she had had the double nationality (not anymore, though; she had to choose which one to drop before reaching twenty-one, as per the laws of Japan. Her father's birth country isn't fond of anyone binational).

Truthfully, Nasutei has never cared for the taste of alcohol. She doesn't really like it, finding it too bitter. The only mildly alcoholic beverage she enjoys is cider, but cider doesn't really cut it for a celebration, does it? People want champagne or famous wine brands, they want cognac, they want liquors.

Nasutei's tastes have never been so fancy.

"When you're old enough, we'll share a drink together on your birthday, Nasutei."

Her finger runs down her own untouched glass.

Nasutei knows Grandfather likely meant he'd drink with her when she'd celebrate her twentieth birthday, that they'd share at toast to her newly reached adulthood…

And still, he had a bottle ready for her the year she was to turn eighteen. Nasutei found it in the cellar of the mansion, wrapped in a ribbon, during the time she and the boys had taken shelter there after the first defeat of Arago. Oh, how she cried when she realized it was likely going to be one of her birthday gifts, Grandfather having been ready to bend the Japanese law for his half-French granddaughter, to make her feel happy and grown-up already…

She swallows dryly. Even now, it makes her teary-eyed.

She has never touched that one bottle. It still sits securely in a cotton-filled box, with the card her Grandfather had tied to it still affixed to the bottleneck by the ribbon.

Nasutei will never open it, because what's the point, when the person she was meant to share it with isn't there anymore, hasn't been for years now?

"When you're old enough, we'll share a drink together on your birthday, Nasutei."

Instead, she does what she does today. She buys a decent bottle (because she's still part French, and she won't settle for a 'plonk', thank you very much, and she has the means to get something GOOD besides), and pours a drink for herself and one for a dead man, and she toasts him in silence, even if she won't drink.

Never on her birthday, by respect for a loving man, and a promise that couldn't be kept in the end…

End