#finally i start to draw tsukiko's twin more

[fatedroses]

Jealous worm vs papa bear

[tkc-info]

After the Ten Days

Day 9 - wedding

@wagner-fell @chibi-tsukiko @littleturtle95

January 2001

“It’s been ten days,” Leora complained “Haven’t they taken their prank too far?”

Beside her, Linette sighed like she was tired of the world itself. Coming from someone who’d built herself to let out as little emotion as possible, that was quite something. “Way too far.”

“Our wedding wasn’t like this,” Leora turned to her wife “We did everything like we should, and didn’t come out of the xariya a minute after stipulated time.”

Dahlia and Matthias, however, had locked themselves in the rococo-palace-like temple Leora and Linette stood before now. And, sure, Leora had already known they wouldn’t exit the xariya at the time they’d promised —basically because Dahlia had told her so— but she’d expected to wait one, two, three days more at most to see her sister. That was what was customary among the Saz, not ten days, and counting.

“We could pay a visit to Xuegang and Lei,” Linette proposed; no matter how stressed Leora felt, the artificially-even tone her wife employed to refer to Lei Hao didn’t escape her “They surely know why they’re taking so long, and, if worse comes to worst, we can ask them for their key.”

That ‘ask’ was an euphemism for ‘steal’, Leora knew. Linette was saying she wasn’t above robbing Xuegang and Lei so that Leora could berate her twin sister for prolonging her wedding excessively. For that, Leora appreciated her wife, but still a part of her hurt at the notion that she would have to resort to stealing to get a key that should’ve been in her possession in the first place.

Ever since Leora and Dahlia had learned the workings of weddings, they’d promised to make each other the key-bearers of their respective xariyas, because they wanted to be guardian of the temple the other would get married in.

“It will symbolise our unbreakable bond,” Dahlia had liked to explain “My wedding will concern only me and my husband, because we Saz refuse to showcase as intimate a thing as an atemporal love promise, yet you will posses the key to the xariya because I want you to know that I want you in every step of my life. No matter how private.”

But then, Dahlia had gone and asked Xuegang and Lei to be her key-bearers. When Leora had confronted her about it, she’d only said that Xuegang and Lei were more fitting for the role because they were both her and Matt’s best friends, while Leora was ‘just’ her twin.

Leora hadn’t argued against that logic, she hadn’t wanted to cry in front of the person she’d once been the closest to.

“Let’s take the first portal to Mirror Shanghai,” Leora said, looking down at her 1750s blue breeches “We had these made for nothing.”

Linette set a comforting hand on the small of her back. “My love—” she stopped suddenly “There they are.”

“Dahlia?” Leora’s heart seemed to leap out of her chest, but when she looked up, the gates of the xariya were still locked.

Linette shook her head. “Look,” she pointed to two figures approaching from the left.

The xariya was unlike any temple humans had created. It stood in the middle of a deserted valley; a curving line of stone tiles and arches that began several paces away drawing a path to its main gate. The day Dahlia and Matthias were supposed to come out of the xariya, lots of people —the Carranzas, the Mochizukis, the Beardsleys, friends, all but Dahlia’s parents— dressed in mid-18th century attire had been crowding the valley, but as days had passed and passed, those numbers had dwindled until only Leora and Linette remained.

Them, and two more people: Xuegang and Lei.

“This means that the waiting’s over,” Leora heard her wife say as if from afar.

Leora ran to them.

“Are they finally going to come out?” she asked them.

Xuegang and Lei started at her voice. Both turned to look at her as if Leora were some otherworldly creature. That was the first sign that something was wrong; the other signs descended upon Leora immediately after that.

Xuegang was dressed in a dark tang suit, and Lei in a white hanfu, not the European garments Dahlia had compelled them to wear. Both looked stricken: there was an ashen undertone to Xuegang’s tanned skin, and Lei clearly hadn’t slept in at least two days. One of his arms was wrapped around her waist, drawing her closer to him, as if Lei needed the support.

A distant part of Leora —the one that was always connected to her puppeteer insignia— understood that some of Lei’s un-wellness was due to a pregnancy, and questioned why she hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about the life growing in her womb. However, Leora refused to acknowledge that part of herself. Right now, she only wanted to know why the only people who weren’t disconnected from her sister looked like that.

“Did you lose the key?” she asked them, frantic.

Please, Roxia, let that be it, she thought Let this be something as inconsequential as a key and not—

Xuegang shook his head. He dug a hand into one of his pockets and brought out an embellished gold key. “We’re going inside,” he declared, with an ominousness that made Leora cringe.

Days afterwards, she wouldn’t be able to remember what happened next clearly. She only had shots of events frozen in time, without anything that linked them together.

Grabbing Linette’s wrist. Knocking on the xariya’s main entrance with a fist and all her strength. Breaking into the xariya. Standing before an unmade bed with Xuegang and Linette as Lei sobbed on the floor. Nudging Linette to go to Lei while she tried to comfort Xuegang. Being confused and feeling so, so numb.

“Just a minute,” Leora told Xuegang, taking a step back.

He hardly paid her any attention. His eyes shone with tears that wouldn’t stop falling down his face. Leora’s were dry.

The xariya had three rooms to which you could access through an ample, oval foyer. Dahlia and Matthias hadn’t been in the first room, nor the second, nor the third —and they weren’t in the foyer. That seemed strange to Leora: the foyer’s floor was of pristine marble like the surface of a mirror; the ceiling was a gold-and-aquamarine vault; and the ostentatious drawings and renaissance columns more than made up for the lack of furniture. Dahlia would’ve loved this place. She fit in it and belonged in it, yet she wasn’t there.

Leora was alone.

Slowly, numbness gave way to nausea, and Leora couldn’t breathe without feeling sick. She noticed that sweat had soaked the back of her jacket and shirt both. Dahlia wasn’t there, Leora was alone. One twin wasn’t there, the other twin was alone.

Leora fainted.

“I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Beardsley. I mean,” the registrar hastened to rectify “Mr. and Mrs. Everitt.”

Dahlia smiled at Matt, who whispered, “You may kiss the groom, Princess.”

“Oh, I will,” she hooked her arms around his neck, got on her tiptoes, and smooched their lips together. Matt’s palms spread out on her lower back, hers threaded through his red hair.

Finally, she was married to the love of her life. It made sense. Dahlia felt like every moment of her existence had led to this civil wedding in good-old London; no one present but them, the registrar, and the two witnesses she’d scouted from Hyde Park. The affair had been small and wouldn’t be succeeded by a party because they didn’t know many people.

In fact, Dahlia couldn’t remember anyone that wasn’t Matthias. A time before their wedding.