Fiction gives us control over how people respond to things.
That's a powerful tool, and I think we often underestimate it.
.
Sitting on his heels in front of his mother's gravesite, Ryo Bakura wasn't nearly as calm and centered as he'd been at the airport. He kept reading the inscription there, his attention snagging on her name—Aya Bakura, Beloved Wife & Mother—and he struggled to remember who she was. Now it was Noa's turn to be the calm one; he stood off to one side, just behind his boyfriend's left shoulder, at parade rest.
Ryo thought that, at the first word, Noa would tackle his father to the ground and choke him unconscious.
Roma, for his part, was kneeling in front of Amane.
He'd barely spoken three sentences so far.
". . . I owe you an apology," Roma said eventually, and the suddenness of his voice infringing on the awkward silence made Ryo jump. "Frankly, I owe you half a childhood, but I can't give you that. But I can give you the apology." Roma turned to regard his son, and Ryo turned to look back. "I'm sorry, son. You've had to grow up all on your own, grieve all on your own, while I've been off chasing ghosts. You deserve better than that. You deserve so much better than that."
Ryo cleared his throat. "I, um . . . I hope you'll forgive me asking, Papa. I . . . I appreciate and accept your apology, but . . . what. That is to say . . . how did you . . . what made you . . . ?"
"How is it that you've come to this point, sir?" Noa asked softly, gently, but with just a hint of ice behind his polite façade. "What epiphany have you had?" Roma clearly felt that chill, because he flinched. Just a little, and he hid it well, but the boys watching him were experts in noticing discomfort.
They both saw it.
"Yes," Ryo said, smiling up at Noa. "Thank you, Noa."
Noa nodded.
Roma looked down at his hands. He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, then he said: "I wish I could tell you that I realized all on my own that my last letter was . . . insulting. That I've been running from you because I'm scared to lose you, too, and that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wish I could tell you that I turned over a new leaf of my own volition. Hell, I wish I could tell you God came to me in a dream and told me. But none of that happened."
Ryo had daydreamed about a day like this for years. Now that it was here, finally here, he was quite thoroughly flummoxed. He had no idea what to do with what he was being given, and he thought he might have fully dissociated except for the fact that Noa was there, making it real.
"What happened," Roma went on, "is that one of the fellows at my latest site, he saw the last letter you sent me. He read it, not realizing what it was. When he talked to me about it, he happened to ask me if I'd sent a reply. He wanted to know what I'd said in response to your words. And, well, I told him." Roma shifted his shoulders. "He told me that if I didn't get my ass on a flight back here to Domino and apologize in person, he was going to stuff me in a crate and mail me to you."
Ryo blinked, stared, and then started laughing so loudly that at least ten birds took wing and vanished in a cloud of feathers past the trees.
