#Doc that's technically a monologue and not a soliloquy

[docholligay]

The Long Black Road

I FINISHED SOMETHING EVERYONE CONGRATULATE ME. This was @yamadara87 prompt, “MA after Haruka dies” takes place in the MaS AU. 

The shop was quiet for a Wednesday afternoon. It could have been owing to the cold as much as anything, and the fact that with so many holidays having recently been laid to rest, women were not nearly so fussy about having the latest style. It was always a slow period of the year, one where Takuya and MA generally set about to improving parts of the shop, thinking about the coming year, and running the books. 

But Takuya was alone in the small but exclusive shop today, and had been for the last few weeks. He’d just finished with a client determined to keep her hair black despite her age, washing up in the back corner, when he heard the door open, the high bells chiming across the pristine shop. He knew damn well he didn’t have an appointment lined up, and their shop was the sort of place that only did a walk-in if your cash and your pedigree matched up. 

He’d even sent their receptionist home for the day. 

“Welcome!” He beamed brightly as he walked out the back, setting aside the actual thoughts in his head for something much more encouraging. 

“It’s just me.” M.A. stopped at the front desk and looked over her appointment book, whipping through the pages until she came to the clean emptiness of the current week. “When Masami comes in tomorrow, let her know I’m taking appointments. Make sure she calls Ms. Sato, I’m sure she’s having a heart attack right about now.” 

“I--” Takuya leaned against the wall near the back of the shop, “Wasn’t expecting to see you. For awhile.” 

MA looked up at him and grinned, tossing the curly hair back from her face. On anyone else it might have looked careless, but it was in these moments that Takuya was reminded that MA was a Kaioh by bloodline and inclination, and had her mother’s way of making something look intentional and stylish. 

“Get used to having the place to yourself, huh?” 

“No,” he shook his head, straightening up off the wall, “I missed having you. But, M.A….” 

“Pop died this morning, to answer your question,” she punctuated the thought by dropping the pen into the cup, “so I’m back.” 

Takuya nearly sighed, but then thought better of it. Since they’d met in school, he’d always been taken with MA’s blend of brashness and breeding, the way she could play at either without skipping a beat, her intense refusal to allow anything to push her off the balance beam of her own life. She was stubborn and strong and all the things Takuya wanted for himself, and had cultivated a bit of, in his adult life. 

But things are never simple, Takuya had learned as life went on, and strength can be an anchor, and an anchor can do many things at once, while never changing shape. MA was not weak, because she never let herself be weak. She never gave herself permission to be weak. 

He doubted he could give her that permission either, but at the very least, he could try. 

“You don’t have to be here.” 

MA scoffed and shook her head. “What else is there to do?” 

She looked at him when he said it, a mild look of amusement on her face. She wanted him to have an answer. MA would have loved for Takuya to know what a human being was supposed to do, after a mother dies. He would have loved to have an answer, as well, and, tugging at his sleeve, realize he should have known the question would come long before it did. 

MA didn’t give him a chance to come up with anything before she parried each blow. 

“Funeral home got her body,” she closed the schedule book, “Pop planned most of her own funeral,” she took mail from the desk and shoved an envelope in the correct slot, “wrote the eulogy,” another envelope, in the garbage this time,” So, what is there to do? Other than sit around and cry about something we’ve known is coming for months. Kimi has that down, I don’t think the family needs me for that.”

Takuya came over and sat at the desk, looking up at her. 

“What about your kids?” 

She stopped for a moment, mail still in hand, and looked past the desk and out the front window. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, and eventually she closed it, shaking her head, returning to her mail. 

“MA--” 

“What, Takuya?” She tossed down the rest of the mail. “What do you want from the entire conversation? You want me to cry? Would that make you feel like I was doing all of this correctly?” she crossed her arms. “There is nothing on earth left that I can do for her. My Papa is dead, and there’s no bringing her back, and all the ridiculous throwing myself into open sobbing is going to change that. It would just be to make everyone else feel better. It won’t make me feel better, because she would still be dead, and I would be annoyed and crying.” 

“What I want, Marine, is for you not to do this--thing, that you do,--”

“I don’t know why you bother even trying to say my name. You pronounce it like a donkey.” She sat down at the desk and opened the computer file. 

“--where you pretend everything is fine, and that nothing can possibly rattle you, and then all of a sudden, you’re gone. You just suddenly decide to deal with things, and God fucking forbid you let anyone help you.” 

She just looked at him, an unimpressed stare on her face. 

“Remember when you and your boyfriend broke up? And it was nothing, until I looked up, and you were in some cheap-ass onsen, drunk, for five days. That was a month later!” 

M.A.’s face turned from unimpressed to thoughtful, though still there was no betrayal of sadness. 

“You’re, and I don’t say this to piss you off, a little bit like your mom sometimes.” 

M.A. let out a loud groan and threw herself back in the chair. “God, I am, aren’t I?” She sighed. “It’s some Greek tragedy of mine.” 

Takuya shrugged. “I like your mom. But, she definitely is, emotionally avoidant.” 

M.A. rested her hands on her chin and stared down at the appointment book. She and Taskuya sat there for a moment, saying nothing, at all, until M.A.’s voice came softly from the desk. 

“I was such a bitch to Pop when I was a teenager.” 

All of life is a play, and there ware times in our lives when we must recognize the act and stage on which we stand. There is a time for the quick back and forth of Wilde, and a time for the ponderousness of Chekov, and above all, a time for a Shakespearan soliloquy. 

And so Takuya did not respond. 

“She was such a good mom,” M.A. folded her hands into her lap, looking more like Michiru than ever before, though he would not have dared say it, “She packed my lunch every day, with these little notes about how she loved me, or was proud of me. Sometimes just a little drawing. I started throwing them away, when I was 13. All my Pop had ever wanted,” she took a deep breath, “ was to be a mom, and I just kept throwing it back in her face.”

“She tried to take me to the movies, shopping, and just--” she gave a difficult huff, “I wanted nothing to do with her. She just wanted me too badly. Isn’t that horrible? My Pop loved me so much that I resented her for it. I thought she was pathetic.

“I really am like my Mom, sometimes, Takuya. You don’t know the half of it. I’ve heard stories of my Mom, when she was a teenager, even up into her 20s, how she was vain and petty, and self-centered. Mom always turns a little pink when anyone mentions it. And then I did the same thing, but to Pop. To someone who only wanted to love me for everything I was. Didn’t matter when I screamed at Mom, didn’t matter when I snuck out. Didn’t even matter when I stole her medication and sold it. And I hated her for it.” she gave a chuckle, “I’m such a bitch.” 

M.A looked up at the ceiling, hands still folded, unable to even glance over at Takuya. 

“I was so cruel, those next few years. I told her she was embarrassing. I told her to leave me alone. Once, when I was 15, I told her she wasn’t even my mom. I wasn’t related to her at all. She started to cry, right there in front of me. You know what I did, Takuya?” she looked over at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Fucking nothing. I stood there, and watched my Pop cry, when she had thrown her entire life into raising me. What kind of fucking...monster…” 

Sometimes, a soliloquy becomes a spiral, and so Takuya stepped in. 

“I knew your Pop for, well, as long as I’ve known you. You two were really close, M.A. So you were a bitch for three years as a kid. I knew Haruka, and I saw her with you, and I never would have known any of that. She forgave you. And you changed. So.” 

M.A laughed and wiped away her tears. “Well, at a certain point, my aunt Mina had enough of my shit and threatened to beat my ass if I couldn’t treat Pop with some kind of borderline kindness.” she cleared her throat. “She told me everything that ever happened to Pop. I never knew all of it. She never told me, and, you know, her mom died when I was really little. And--and, Pop had a pretty big surgery around that time, and I remember cutting class and taking Kimi--” 

“Kimi cut class!? Kimiko. Your sister.” 

M.A. nodded. “The first and last time. Pop hadn’t wanted us to see her until she was a little better. But since when was I listening to Pop? Kimi was so worried.We got there and Pop was so...I felt bad for her.” 

Takuya smiled and leaned over the desk. “And the Snow Queen melted, and became a real girl.” 

“Eat a dick, Takuya.”

“With pleasure.”

She shook her head. “I never apologized to her. I never told her how much I regretted being a complete asshole.” 

He touched her shoulder, and she looked up at him. “Did you stop being an asshole?”

“Yeah.” 

“I think the best apology is changed behavior.” He sat on the desk. “Your Pop loved you. And she knew you loved her. After all that, what else is there?” 

M.A. thought for a moment, looking off into the empty shop that smelled perpetually of the fine shampoos and conditioners they used on the clients, over to where her scissors lay covered in their case where she had left them weeks ago. There was nothing to be done, she was right in that respect. And when there is nothing to be done, at times, we can only be left with the reality of how we feel. 

“I miss her.” 

It was so plain that it surprised the both of them. Artless and plain, without any kind of bravado, laid out there on the counter. Takuya walked across the shop into his station, opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of HIbiki. 

“She was a hell of a person,” He put two plastic glasses in front of them, pouring, “I’m better for having known her.” 

“I’ll drink to that.” 

M.A. did not stop feeling guilty that day, or for a long time, for life does not work that way, and rarely affords us an instant release from that which binds us. But on that day, in a closed shop in a fancy district, she drank good whiskey from a poor cup, and cried, and took the first step toward the sun.