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sabraeal · 5 years ago

Note

So a prompt for the Wide Florida Bay, Haki meets Haruto meeting.

Wide Florida Bay | With Hands Molded, as Galatea

Issue: Jan 1994

Vogue sat down with the illustrious Ms Bergstrom, known for not only her modeling career in her youth, but also her current occupation of philanthropic works.

Bergstrom: I was an actress as well, briefly.Vogue: Yes, who could forget?Bergstrom: (teasing) You, apparently!

“God, this whole island is so fucking boring.” Andalusia slaps her copy of Vogue onto the table, glaring down the line of chaises. “Whose idea was it to come to Santorini anyway?”

“Haki’s!” Cristal pipes nervously before tilting her hat’s brim down over her face. It’s such a pitiful act, Haki can’t even manage to summon up a glare.

“Ugh, Haki, what the fuck.” Andaulsia rolls over, foxing her with a scowl that would make Cristal burst into tears. “There’s nothing here but honeymooners and old people.”

This was my mom’s favorite place. It sits right on the tip of her tongue, a sure way to win the argument, to get everyone on her side and leave Andalusia slinking around the suite like a scolded terrier. But it’s also ammunition, a piece of her that can be flung back when tempers get high or when someone needs to prove that she’s too emotional to weigh in.

And that’s not what she wants her mother to be: yet another little pin to prick her with, another weight to hold her down when someone wants to climb higher. So Haki grits her teeth, making a show of applying more sun screen.

“And sunsets,” Tomomi offers with a studied offhandedness. “Those have been pretty killer.”

Her mother had thought that too. At least, that’s what her father said, when she’d asked, a wistful expression on his face. Never the same one twice.

“God, fuck sunsets. We should have gone to Ibiza.” Andalusia flops restlessly on her chaise, like a fish on the dock. “That’s where everyone who’s everyone is. Not this shitshow.”

She knows she’s supposed to apologize now, that she’s supposed to offer a half dozen explanations for why she thought Santorini would personally float Andalusia’s boat, but–

There’s none. It’s their first trip since they started college, the first time they’ve been together so long since they flung themselves across the country to colleges so far apart it seems almost purposeful, and Haki’s just felt…adrift. She’s made friends, yes, with all the right people who go all the right places, but it all fits her like a dress two sizes too small, like she’s still trying to stuff herself into the Zac Posen she wore to her Sweet Sixteen.

She’s had a single year of freedom, a single year to think for herself, and all that’s been buzzing through her head for months is that she doesn’t want this.

“Ibiza is so last decade.” Mariazell sits up in her chaise, tossing her sheet of blonde hair over her shoulder. “God, my parents went to Ibiza.”

Mariazell had been a last minute addition, a friend of a friend of Andalusia’s who she’d met at a party and thought was as cool as a Hilton. Haki had been prepared to hate her guts, but, well–

It seems as though things are looking up.

“Saint Tropez, then,” Andalusia decides, “I heard–”

“Old news.” Mariazell inspects her nails with an air of disinterest Haki can only aspire to. No one goes there anymore.”

Outdone and annoyed, Andalusia does the one thing she knows best: pouting. “Fine, then where is everyone?”

“Mykanos.” She says simply, as if anyone with a brain would know. It’s the sort of trick that rolls off Haki’s back, but Andalusia looks like she’s about to have an aneurysm.

“Where the fuck is that supposed to be?” she snaps, red-faced even under her tan. “Turkey or something?”

Mariazell lets out a laugh. “Oh my god, seriously? It’s right here. Like three hours by boat.”

“How come I’ve never heard of it?”

Mariazell levels her with the driest expression anyone has ever dared. “It’s exclusive.”

Haki coughs, tucking her mouth into her shoulder. Andalusia was the biggest hanger-on she knew, at the forefront of what everyone else thought was cool, and now here she was: hopelessly behind the times.

God, she’s almost starting to like this girl.

Mariazell tosses her head. “Or at least it was, but now anybody who’s anybody parties there.”

“Then that’s where we should be.” Andalusia’s mouth bends into a sly curve. “Do you think we could get– what’s his name? That guy with the yacht?”

“Touka?” Tomomi supplies, casting Haki a worried glance. “Touka Bergatt?”

“Yeah, him.” Andalusia lounges, crossing her legs the way models did in magazines, as if it might make her taller. “He was all over us yesterday. Do you think he could get us there?”

Haki can’t bite back her grimace. His arm still feels heavy around her shoulders, leaning in far too close as he asked if she would like a private tour of the captain’s cabin. Alone. “Isn’t he old?”

“He’s twenty-five.” Her eyes flash, like a cougar watching a hare, and Haki braces herself for the pounce. “I mean, he’s just as old as Izana Wisteria.”

Mariazell raises an eyebrow. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Oh it doesn’t.” Andalusia’s sprawls on the chaise like a panther, playing with its pray. “Haki’s just obsessed with him.”

The I’m not is at the tip of her tongue, but Mariazell beast her to it.

“You are?” Her second brow joins the first. “Aren’t your families friends or something? Don’t you know him?”

“Their mothers modeled together back in the 80s, along with Cecile Seiran,” Andalusia supplies helpfully, her face the very picture of poorly-feigned innocence. “She met him once, refused to talk to him, and then hyperventilated in a hallway when he said hi.”

That’s not precisely wrong, but it’s definitely not the way she would prefer to tell that story. Which is never.

“I don’t see why hitching a ride with Touka Bergatt’s such a problem,” Andalusia continues, “not when she’d happily jump on Izana Wisteria’s dick if he let her.”

“That’s gross,” she snaps, body flushed and fists clenched. “I wouldn’t jump on anyone, not matter who they are. Just because he’s–” a genius, an innovator, and sexy as hell– “attractive doesn’t mean I want to fuck him.”

She’s known plenty of people who look good on paper but don’t complete the fantasy in real life. Izana Wisteria would probably be one of them. She’s not an idiot.

“Don’t be fooled. Haki’s saving herself for him,” Andalusia coos, drawing giggles from the other girls. Well, everyone but Tomomi, whose mouth has thinned to nonexistence.

“I’m not saving myself for anyone,” she grits out. It’s impossible, since there’s nothing about her to be ruined or rescued just from having sex no matter what Andalusia thinks, or her father, or the tabloid that ran a countdown to when she was “legal.” It’s the fucking 2000s, not medieval Europe. No one’s going to be airing her sheets on her wedding night, showing the peasants how she bled on the sheet like a good, God-fearing girl.

Not that she wouldn’t be burned at the stake by popular opinion if she did sleep around. Haki Bergstrom has a reputation to keep, but that could be solved by circumspect partners and careful planning, if she wanted to. Which she hasn’t.

Of course, this all jumbles in her throat, anger boiling it down to, “High school boys are gross.”

Andalusia grins. “We’re in college now. College boys exist.”

“You know what I mean,” she snips waspishly. “Boys our age are obsessed with getting their dick wet and anal.”

“And putting their penis between your boobs,” Cristal adds, shrinking as they all turn to her. “I-I mean, so I’ve heard.”

Andalusia scoffs, mouth curling like the has a secret. “Then don’t date boys. Date men.”

Ugh, she would say that; she’d been the first one to get a boyfriend at sixteen, a twenty-two year old DJ that had gotten her grounded for a month when her parents found him sneaking out of her window. They’d never gotten much further than French kissing and hand jobs, but Andalusia might as well have gone all the way since she likes to lord it over everyone.

Mariazell snorts, tossing her hair. “Adult men who date girls are the grossest of all.”

Andalusia recoils like she’s been slapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on.” Mariazell smiles, giving the distinct impression that she’s outside the joke when anyone with a brain is inside. “Guys in their mid-twenties trying to shack up with girls who are ‘freshly eighteen?’ They want a blow-up doll, not a relationship. And with girls like us? They just want Daddy’s money.” She raises a brow. “Surely you’ve figured that out.”

“Of course I have,” Andalusia lies, flush spreading down to her chest. “But Bergatt’s our best bet to get off this island and into where all the right people are partying. I’ll do what I have to do to for that.”

“But will Haki?” Mariazell’s smile spreads into a Cheshire grin. “That’s who he was all over yesterday.”

“Count me out,” she says, settling against her lounge. “We could party back in Miami. I like the silence here.”

Cristal yelps, “But if you don’t go, he might not take us.”

She’s tempted to tell her, my worst nightmare isn’t Andalusia not getting her way, but it’s too cruel. As much as Cristal’s brown-nosing annoys her, she’s a skittish little thing, always scared of being left behind, and Haki knows better than anyone– they are only what their fathers have made of them.

“That’s not Haki’s problem,” Tomomi snaps. “What do we need her for anyway? Isn’t Andalusia always saying how she can get any man she wants?”

“I can!” She��s too eager, too defensive, and it’s clear the only person on the deck that even half believes it is her. “You think I can’t?”

Mariazell’s mouth curves. “I think you aren’t a tall, leggy blonde. and Touka Bergatt is used to having his pick of the litter.”

“Fine!” Andalusia bolts up from her lounge, looking like thunder herself. “You have an hour. We’re getting off this island.”

Haki snorts. “I’m not going–”

“You’re not invited,” she shrills. “We don’t need you. I’ll wrap Touka Bergatt so tight around my finger he’d take us back to Miami, and I don’t need you messing it up.”

She stomps off the deck, Cristal hurrying behind her, and Mariazell gives Haki a knowing smile.

“Enjoy your solitude,” she murmurs, unfurling from her seat. “I know I would.”

Vogue: We’ve heard that you disdain the party scene. Bergstrom: I spend much of my life with my husband in Miami or in LA doing business. They call New York the City that Never Sleeps, but in those cities no one ever breathes. Why do I need to go to a club when every business appointment is a three-ring circus?Vogue: So where do you go to unwind?Bergstrom: While I was modeling, many years ago now, I used to take trips with my friends to a small island in Greece– Santorini, you may have heard of it? The sunsets are not to be believedVogue: Once or twice. By friends, you mean fellow models-turned-business moguls, Haurto Wisteria and Cecile Seiran?Bergstrom: Yes, I believe my publicist has sent you the photo?Vogue: Yes, it’s gorgeous. Thank you for letting us print it.Bergstrom: (laughs) Oh, what woman wouldn’t like you to print a photo of her when she’s twenty?Vogue: Twenty year olds!Bergstrom: Too true, too true. We’re so harsh on ourselves, and then we look back years later and think, ‘now what did I think was wrong?!’

Haki could always ask for a car; Axel Bergstrom’s daughter would have a fleet of Santorini’s finest, discreet limos should she but ask the concierge, but it seems important to do this the right way.

She’s never ridden a bus before, but she’s seen movies. She drops her coins into the till, takes her seat, and politely ignores every person around her as she scrolls through her phone. The ride to Oia feels like a lifetime, but– but–

Her mother wasn’t riding in limos when she came here. She’d barely been older than Haki is now, a young model with hardly anything to her name.

So that’s how she takes in Santorini: on foot, relying on her smile and the few Greek words she learned from the hotel staff when she called for room service. It gets her just as far as her mother always said it would; right up to the twisty alleyways of Oia, mounting step over step to find the right vantage point.

Her calves are burning when she finds it, protesting another step: a terrace, overgrown with vines and abandoned, three ancient lounge chairs laid out across the white stone.

She vaults up the last few stairs, mouth stretching wide as she takes in the view of the caldera. It’s perfect; an unobstructed view straight out to the horizon, and it’s the closest she’s ever felt to her mother’s presence beside her. She doesn’t believe in all the stuff normally, but a find like this is beyond coincidence. Maybe there’s nothing of her mother back in Miami, but here on this rooftop, every breath she takes is thick with her, heavy with a scent she hardly remembers–

“Ah,” huffs a voice from behind her. “Company.”

Haki spins on her heel, hands clutching at the lip of the wall, as if that might somehow stop the terrace’s owner from asking her to leave. “Oh, I– I’m sorry, I thought no one would be up here. I–”

It’s a woman who emerges onto the roof, windswept blonde hair haloing around her face as she sweeps across. “Oh, no, don’t worry. I don’t own this house. I’ve just borrowed its terrace for the evening.” She sweeps out a hand, the one not holding an electric blue cocktail, and gestures toward the lounges. “There’s no reason we can’t share.”

She’s older, Haki realizes, but her age is impossible to place. There’s crows feet starting to stretch their talons at the corners of her eyes, but she wears them so casually they’re almost an accessory than a mark of time.

“Please,” she insists, perching on her own chair, “sit. Are you traveling alone?”

“Oh.” Haki sidles over to a lounge, taking an awkward seat. “Ah, today I am.”

Her eyebrows raise, perfectly shaped. “Just today?”

“My other friends took off for Mykanos,” she explains, swallowing down the good riddance.

“Ah, I see.” The woman smiles of the rim of her cocktail glass. “Santorini’s too slow for them, hm? I’ve heard that’s where the real parties are at nowadays.”

“Yeah.” That’s all she needs to say, but there’s something about this woman’s steady gaze, inquiring and yet not expectant, that makes her add, “I’m from Miami, thought. I can party any time–” not that she wants to all that much anymore– “but I can’t get these sunsets.”

The woman’s brows hike up even farther, but it’s…approving. Impressed. “I wouldn’t expect to hear that from someone your age. You must be in college now, aren’t you?”

“Ah, yes.” This is the last thing she wants to talk about. “I’m a sophomore.”

“Oh, how nice!” She sounds…actually pleased, as if it were some pleasant surprise. “My youngest is a sophomore too! But in high school.”

This woman does not look old enough to have a high school sophomore for a child.

“And my eldest just graduated a year ago. He’s getting his MBA now,” she confides with a flushed-cheek sort of pride.

Haki can only stare; this woman is either extremely well-preserved, or she was pushing out kids when she was sixteen.

“What are you doing?” she continues, interested. “You seem like the sort of girl who has a plan.”

Haki can’t imagine what about her says that; she’s a lone woman on a stolen terrace in the middle of a country she doesn’t even speak the language of, with little more than a phone and a transit card in her pocket. “Ah, not really. I’m actually Undecided. For now.” She gives her a helpless shrug. “I’m still learning what I like, I guess.”

The woman stills, eyes narrowing. “Do you mean you’ll learn what you like, or you’ll learn to live with what you’re supposed to like?”

Haki knows she looks like an idiot, sitting there slack-jawed like she belongs on the Miami version of Jersey Shore, getting drunk and having drama for the amusement of the masses, but–

But no one’s ever asked her that before.

The woman curls towards her, chin propped up on a hand. “That’s what I thought. What do you want, really?”

“I want to mean something.” She claps a hand over her mouth, mortified. “No, wait! I mean–”

Cool fingers wrap around hers, she’s filled with a sudden, complete sense of comfort. Her words evaporate on her tongue, lost. “I know what you mean. Go on.”

Haki blinks, staring at the long, strong hands that cover her own. This must be what it’s like for people who have moms. “I want to make a difference. I don’t want to do what my dad does and just…make money.”

There’s more to it than that, so much more. She’d never thought about money before, only known that she had it, had a lot of it, and then she’d went to college and–

And she’d found out the price of it. Filled in swamp lands and critically endangered animals. Weather growing worse each year as the earth changes, forced to be flat so hotels and condos and timeshares can be built on it. Laborers who work grueling hours and still can’t pay rent, who have to choose between dinner and a doctor’s visit. All to line the pockets of her father and his friends.

She can’t do it anymore. She can’t be happy knowing what she knows. She doesn’t want to be forty, seated on the couch with all the other wives waiting to be swapped out for someone younger, someone stupider as her husband brags about destroying the Everglades for a parking lot.

No, she wants to be the one that stops it. “I want to be a lawyer. A, um, environmental one.”

The woman squeezes her hand, reassuring. “That won’t be easy.”

“I know,” she sighs. “My dad will never let me.”

“Of course not.” The woman smiles. “You’ll get really good at lying.”

She stares. Adults aren’t supposed to give you this sort of advice, she’s pretty sure. Especially not moms.

“There’s a half dozen majors you can do and get into law school.” She shrugs. “Pick something that your father expects from you. Business. Literature. Political Science. And then take whatever classes you need to learn what you have to.”

It sounds so easy when she says it. “But what if–”

She holds up a finger. “Ah, remember: Axel Bergstrom never checks up on an investment when he feels like a return is assured.”

“Right. But…” Her teeth snap down with a click. “How do you know who my father is?“

One of the woman’s hand’s lift, tilting up her chin. “Oh, Haki. You do look so much like your mother. And seeing you here, sitting right where she did…”

She blinks. The picture. Her mother, Cecile Seiran, and–

“Haruto Wisteria,” she breathes. “You’re Haruto Wisteria.”

Her mother’s closest friend. And Izana Wisteria’s mother.

Oh, god.

“You…you’re…” she feels faint.

“She’d be so proud of you, you know,” Haruto says, her thumb rubbing coolly across her cheek. “She always worried the money might ruin you and Makiri.”

She can hardly breathe. “My mother?”

“Oh, of course.” Haruto smiles, distant. “She chained herself to a bulldozer once, protesting the destruction of some natural landmark in Sweden. That’s where she met your father actually.”

She doesn’t need to be told which side of the bulldozer he was on. “And then they…?”

“He was charmed by her tenacity. And Ingrid thought she could change the world, let alone a single man.” Haruto lets go of her chin, mouth giving a rueful twist. “We were young then.”

Haki can hardly picture it; even if her mother wasn’t just a blur in her memory, the though of her father young and in love…

Well, it seemed far-fetched.

“I meant to keep in touch, after…” Haruto’s voice quivers, and she takes a sip of her cocktail. “Well, sometimes we know what we should do, but the pain stops us from doing it. You understand?”

Haki stupidly, blurts out, “No.”

She expects offense, but Haruto only smiles fondly. “No, of course not. Ingrid was always the strong one.” Her hand squeezes tight around Haki’s. “I’m so glad to find you’ve followed in your mother’s footsteps.”

There’s so much to say, but she can only manage, “My mother tied herself to a bulldozer?”

Haruto laughs. “Chained, dear. Chained.”

It’s almost too much to handle. “I…I came here because I read an article about my mom. An old one. And I’d been feeling so lost lately, I just though maybe…maybe if I came here, I’d find myself too, like she did.” Haki hesitates, looking out toward where the sky has begun to pink. “But I think what I was really looking for was my mom.”

“That’s why I come here too,” Haruto murmurs, her voice suddenly thin. “I never feel her so much as I do here. If we get to choose where we are when…when it’s all over, Ingrid would be here.”

Haki turns to her, seeing the shine in her eyes, the fondness in her expression, and even though she’s only ever been a story in a magazine to her, it feels– like more than just one meeting. Like a history stretched out behind them and before them.

“I don’t remember much about my mom,” she admits, “but I feel like she’s here. With us.”

Haruto smiles down at her. “I’m glad you stumbled up onto my terrace, Haki.”

She squeezes her hand, the sky blurring. “Me too.”

Vogue: Where is this, if you don’t mind me asking?Bergstrom: A rooftop in Oia. We thought it was abandoned, only to be joined by the owners a few moments later!Vogue: Oh no!Bergstrom: No, no, they were too gracious! They let us stay, gave us cocktails. Told us to come back any time. And we have! I think they didn’t expect that (laughs).Vogue: Is this your favorite place to watch the sunset?Bergstrom: Yes, yes! I think if I die this will be my heaven. No matter how much I love my husband, my children, part of my heart will always be in Oia.

“You know,” Haruto says as the sun sets over the horizon, leaving only the palest sky behind, “you should meet my son.”

Haki nearly rolls out of her lounge. “What? R-really?”

“Oh yes.” Haruto’s lips twitch as she looks down at her. “I think you’d give him a real run for his money.”

#Anonymous #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #The Wide Florida Bay #my fic #hakizana if you're haruto XD #ans #i cannot say how much of a breeze the first half was #only for the last half to be the world's BIGGEST BITCH #but i think i finally got it where i wanted #also once again i wish i had known haki's last name #before i'd had to make one up #but now i am locked in #since i'd already gone and made a backstory about it #before the arleon reveal #DEEPEST SIGH #now all i need is for the 'brothers' tranlsation to be right #and there's like three arleon brothers to joss me or something

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bubblesthemonsterartist · 6 years ago

Note

Early Pas de Deux Hakizana: he may have cast her as his prima, but that doesn't mean Izana has to like it

Prompts are currently closedwhile I catch up. I will announce when I am open! :)

A/N: Pre-canon companionpiece to Pas de Deux.

Pairing: Hakizana

Content Warning: A funeral. Mention of canonical minor character death (Kain)

It shouldn’t be this easy.

But when he moves forward,she moves back; when he lifts, she leaps. Like the pull of the earth, like thesun to her planets, one moment she tethers him, bending to his hands, going laxin his arms; in the next, she draws taunt, tight like a wire, straining againsthim when the tension needs to draw out and submitting where his will isgreater.

This shouldn’t work. Herbody shouldn’t feel like an extension of his, like both an inhale of breath anda sigh. She’s an Arleon. An American,for fucks sake.

And yet, she’s- she’s-

~ ~ ~

“Magnifique.”

Izana blinks, craning hishead back to catch the plume of smoke that carries the word. In the early afternoon,the sunlight bears fiercely upon the studio, filling it with the heat and brightnessof the stars. Standing within it, his father is both one with the sun andbarely visible, his form a vague outline of light and shadow.

“Père?”

Kain Wisteria does notlook at him, he does not think. He pulls his cigarette to his lips once more,the stub flaring brightly before snuffing out.

“That one.” His fatherclicks his tongue, smoke filling the space as if pointing a direction. “Thegirl in the middle.”

Following carefully, Izana’sscans the bar, the lineup of girls stretched out against the mirror with sweatshining faces. Spools of blonde hair stick to their necks, their collarbones,their foreheads. He counts down the line, past each perfect smile, past each eagerset of eyes until he gets to the middle and-

His face screws up.

“You can’t be serio-”

A program smacks him once tothe back of his head, and Izana winces, “Ow.”

“You’re a Wisteria. Actlike one.” His father pushes himself off the wall, snuffing out his cigarette againstthe ledge. “What’s your problem with her?”

The girls face remainsperfectly painted, her hair tightly piled upon her head. So unlike half thegirls in the line who did not pull the band tight enough, he can appreciate thediscipline. The understanding and acceptance of pain.

Her eyes, though. The others are so eager for approval, so eager to please. Yet her eyesdo not flinch, even when he frowns. They are sure, steady, and there issomething solid about them that remind him of the glacier ice he saw last summer when his mother took him and Zen to the fjords. The way the heat did not melt them, the way that their cavernscaught in the light with their endless shades of perfectly clear greens andblues.

But-

But he’d much rather theshorter one, second one down. Less to carry.

“She’s too big,” heprotests.

His father hums, amused. “You’llcatch up.”

Blowing out his cheeks, heis shameless. “What about that one?” he asks, referring to the shorter blonde.She starts a little, concentration poor, but that can be fixed. With time.

Kain’s lips thin, eyeingher, taking him seriously for once when his eyes trace down her body. “No,” hesays, simple and final.

“No?” Izana’sflabbergasted. Yes, there is a risk at their age of growing tall, or broad, butshe is thin as a wisp, bones fine as a birds, and- “Why not?”

Shaking his head, his jawflexes. “The stage will break her before the end of next year.”

Pointing, Izana exclaims, “Andit won’t her?”

Casting him a disapprovingglare, his father switches to English.

“Girl,” he barks, crossinghis arms, and she does not flinch. “What is your name?”

She opens her mouth, andwhat comes out can hardly pass for any tongue he’s ever heard in this country. “HakiArleon, Monsieur. From Boston.”

~ ~ ~

He’s not expecting her. He’snot expecting anything about her when she finally comes to New York. It’s been years - years since he’s seen her face, since he held her hand at his fathers insistence on that sun filled studio in Paris. But she slides into place among his company as if she had always been one of his own.

She’s quiet, though. Only speaking when she feels the room is quiet enough to hear the weight of her words. And, on occasion, disorienting.

Like now.

“This choreography,” she murmurs,arm barely grazing his shoulder as she reaches over to touch his plans. He hadn’t even realized that she was in his office. “It’snot… French.”

“No,” Izana sniffs,flicking his hair out of his eyes as he continues to sketch. It ishard, though, with the question hovering in the air. “It’s Balanchine.”

“C’est absurd,” she mutters, and he turns towards her sharply, abarb on his tongue but she’s- she’s smiling,the corner of her mouth twitching as if he said something funny. As if he was joking about the future of the Wisteriafamily name. “What would your father say?”

“Nothing,” he drawls,turning back to his work. Flattening his palms over paper and pencil markings,Izana quells the shaking in his core. Finally. An excuse. A reason to shuck offthe last of his father’s ghosts, to prove the old man wrong about one thing. “Because he’s dead. I’m takingthis company in a new direction.”

“I see.” He looks at her,so mild, and this is it, she will break. She will break like every girl father saidwould before he broke them- “What are your feelings on incorporating Vagonovainto Firebird?”

He stares.

~ ~ ~

The church is suffocating,stifling, filled with the murmured wishes of mourners as they pass before thedark veils of his mother. She’s quiet, only the pale of her hands peeking outfrom beneath dark lace, and even then it’s only to rock her youngest, cried tosleep, against her breast.

He was a genius…

Taken from this world too soon…

The great ones always are.

Gritting his teeth, Izana takestheir wishes, one by one. With his slicked back hair and dark suit, his eyesdon’t water, his mouth doesn’t tremble. He’s the man now. The head of hishouse. He can carry the weight of his families’ lies so his mother doesn’t haveto.

“Monsuier Wisteria?”

He knows that voice. Thataccent. It’s atrocious. Maybe her instructor was from Canada.

His mother would scold himif he sneered, so he restrains himself. Just barely. “That was my father’sname.”

“It’s yours now, I guess.”

Those eyes of hers havenot change. They’re still the same shade of shimmering glass. One moment blue;the next, green. But she does not look right in the simple black dress reachingher knees, the seam of her stockings stretching down the back of her calf.

“Izana,” she says,quietly. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

He swallows rapidly. Thetears. The bile. He doesn’t know. And nods.

Remember that you’re the man now, my boy.

“If you-” She takes a deepbreath, hands flexing at her side before, one muscle at a time, falling intorelaxation. “If you want to talk- I lost my mother just last year and-”

“Thank you for coming,” heclips. “Have a safe flight back to the States.”

Her lips press, her throat flexing, but her face does not absorb the strike. She simply moves on.

~ ~ ~

“You’re not going to wantto hear this.”

Izana pauses mid-step,half way to the door, and his blood goes cold. In the shadows, Haruka’s broadback faces him, feet firmly planted and staring through the observation windowat the dancer within.

“That’s never stopped youbefore.”

He grunts, but doesn’tturn. “She’s good.”

“She’s passable,” Izanacorrects.

“She can anticipates yourmovement.”

“So can everyone else.”

That earns him a turn, asingle raises one eyebrow over one shoulder and a patient glare. Izana’s jawclenches.

“I admit,” he says slowly,carefully. “She has some talent for the contemporary.”

Face unchanging, Harukafolds his arms in front of him and looks back towards the studio. “Your fatheralways liked her for you.”

“Yes, well,” Izana shrugs,throwing his jacket over his shoulders. “I strive to be nothing but an obedientson.”

“Izana.” Haruka’s voice isclipped, stern. A voice he hasn’t heard in years. It gives him pause. Gives himtime to see the steel of his gaze reflected on the window. “It would be a shameto throw out a good thing just to show spite.”

Izana turns, mouth openingin denial, but then he catches her form through the window. The arch of herarms, the movement of her line, the leap, the fall- He remembers. He remembershow she felt in his arms. How right.

“I’ll think on it.” Is allhis says, because that’s all he can promise. To Haruka. To Haki. To theseghosts that haunt every studio and every stage.

~ ~ ~

It shouldn’t be this easy,he thinks, stepping out into another cold New York City night.

But he knows.

It is.

#bubbleswrites #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #hakizana #pas de deux #ballet au

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