2021-05-28: Crooked Dance
- Cutscene: Crooked Dance
- Cast: Citan Uzuki, Yui Uzuki
- Where: Shevat Palace
- Date: May 28th, 2021
- Summary: Four years is a very long time.
BGM: (Erik Satie - Pieces froides - Danses de travers No.1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9o6-U9ZR5o
He knows that she's here the moment she steps into Shevat's palace library, even though his back is to the door.
The library is an extensive one, if your aim is books and resources from the last five hundred years... and sometimes, older than that. Even he -- or perhaps 'especially he' -- would have trouble cajoling the archivist for access to the oldest texts, so it's a fortunate thing that what he's looking for is a little more recent even than that. The book he's been going through lies on the table before him, his hand still lingering on the edge of the page.
It's not that she makes any particular sound when she moves, or that there's something about the room's construction that betrays her. It's not as if she's wearing a particular perfume, even if it could have spoken of her approach so far ahead of her as this. No, it's nothing he consciously recognizes: he is simply made aware of this fact as a statement of truth. Perhaps it is something his unconscious mind can see, something that 'he himself' cannot.
When he thinks about the way the conscious mind appears to function, the way it works by seeing and not seeing so much, it really is...
...Astonishing, he decides, at length. However it is that one decides to define that word.
"I thought that I might find you here," Yui says to him, settling a hand on his shoulder.
"Yes..." Citan answers her. "There had been something which I needed to review."
"'Balfour's Cognitive Development Theory'," she says, leaning over his shoulder to see the title of the book. "...Is it because of him?"
He pauses a moment. Then, he nods. "...The 'relapses' have continued. There have been none of them terribly recently, but I feel as if he may continue to worsen. If that should happen, at that point..." He exhales a slow breath. Her grip on his shoulder shifts, tensing ever so slightly. "...But there is still time. I do not think..."
"You always think too much," she interrupts him. Even without seeing her he knows she must have shaken her head.
"And talk too much, as well? Then it's just like always." Her grip on his shoulder eases, then departs altogether.
"What am I supposed to do with you, Hyuga," she says, stepping up alongside his seat.
He smiles tiredly, glancing up at her. "If only I knew the answer to that..." He sighs, then after a moment, reaches over to close the textbook. It wasn't as if his attention was on it anymore, anyway. He shifts the seat he's in, so as to better regard her. "...I had meant to ask you before... How is Midori? I can see that she has grown significantly since I last saw her."
Yui doesn't answer right away. "...She still has not spoken a word. But she has become more adept with hand signing."
"So I had seen, Well then... I will need to learn it as well," he replies. Hesitating a moment himself, he then nods. "I... would not worry terribly about it. Why, I even... any way she chooses to 'speak' is enough."
Yui exhales a little sharply, glancing briefly up towards the ceiling. "I thought that's what you would say." She pauses for again, though, prompting Citan to wrinkle his brow. "I have also been teaching her," and she doesn't have to specify in what for him to understand it.
"Ah."
She studies him for a long moment, perhaps trying to do her own due diligence and ascertain what he's thinking. "Are you unhappy?" she comes out and asks, in time.
His response is to shake his head. "No... it's... merely complicated. A complicated feeling. ...I understand why. This world... is steadily becoming more perilous."
She knows all too well, of course. He can look her in the eye and know that she knows. How could she otherwise, though, with her position?
"It isn't a decision I came to lightly. If at least she could have a 'normal life'..." Yui sighs.
"There is little that is normal, now," is his answer, and at that she's silent. "But tell me... has she been an attentive student with her mother?"
"As attentive a student as her father."
He can't keep a straight face; he smiles a touch slyly. "So, in other words, she's been making trouble for you." The fact that Yui smiles herself and shakes her head is all the response he needs.
"But I'm glad that she's been learning from you," he says, as if to add a degree of finality to the subject. "I am not a very good teacher in such things."
She doesn't answer him directly; instead she gazes at him as if attempting to memorize his face. "You're starting to go grey here," she says at last, reaching out towards him. Her fingertips trace upwards from the edge of his jawline and rise to brush against his temples.
"Well, you have always said that I've acted like an old man. Perhaps now I'll look the part," he jests in turn, anticipating more of the same from her.
But Yui is silent.
He knows in a heartbeat that he's said the wrong thing, and touched a nerve. He turns in his seat, trying to get a look at her. "...Yui?"
They're just moments, but they feel like an eternity unto themselves as they drag on. Finally, she speaks again:
"I was happy with you, in Lahan."
"...Ah," Citan murmurs. Slowly, he eases back his chair and rises from his seat to face her.
It's then that he notices that she's wearing her blade. Had she been, earlier, and he hadn't noticed? Was there somewhere else she was going afterwards with it? Or...
It isn't that he doesn't think it. It's more that he thinks it and carries on, regardless. Trust, he's found, isn't an unwillingness to contemplate the unthinkable about the other -- it's to consider it and carry on regardless. And besides, he doesn't think she would do it here.
If she notices that he'd seen, she gives him no sign.
"Yes," he says to Yui, at last. The smile that he wears when he speaks again is no happy one:
"As was I."
But it's a rare -- particularly from him -- honest smile.
"Please forgive me. If there had been any other way..." he continues.
But he'd known that there wasn't. There are times when the only options he can see are such cruel, calculated things, even when they apply to himself. He has no choice but to see them through to the end. It's the way he has, in some sense, always been.
Yui shakes her head as if to cut him off, though. "I already know," she tells him. Of course she knows. She's always been able to see right through him, or near enough to it to be the same thing. "So you don't need to say anything more." She smiles, and perhaps the right descriptor for it might be 'bittersweet'. "...I always knew it would be difficult, marrying you."
"And..." he asks, pressing on because he's always needed to know these dangerous things, "do you regret it?"
She looks at him for a long moment, almost as if she can't believe him, but shakes her head.
And he finds that even he doesn't quite know what to say to that. Indeed, the two of them stand there for a time, regarding one another.
Sometimes, maybe it's enough to simply be.
Four years. It's really been four years.
"...I retrieved your sketchbooks," he tells her, breaking that silence they both shared; he cannot remain quiet forever. She blinks, surprised, if he's to gauge her expression. "It's a long story. But I had the opportunity to return, just once. And so..."
He'd gone back to their home just once, half-wondering, half-hoping.
Of course she had been gone.
Yui shakes her head. "There are so many things that... Sometimes, I just cannot believe you."
He smiles, and it's his nature, perhaps, that prompts him to smile a little slyly. "You've said that before as well. Perhaps it's possible that I just can't be believed."
Her response is simply to look at him and sigh. But she does begin to smile, and he counts that among one of his life's minor victories.
She draws closer to him then, close enough that she can murmur to him -- as if anyone else were present to overhear -- "If you were wondering where it is... there's no need to worry."
It takes him a moment to realize what she's talking about.
"Ah. So you took the time to retrieve it before you left. ...What a pair we make," he says to her softly. Slowly he reaches out and bridges the distance between them, gently taking her hand in his.
"You old charmer," she tells him, gazing into his eyes. Her free hand finds a place on his shoulder.
His other hand moves to her waist. "I should hope so, I've had sufficient ex--"
And that is when the lights in the library first flicker then die altogether. All of Shevat must feel the slight lurch that follows, trailed in turn by the return of power. It's only then that the alarm screams out, followed by the announcement that even now must be reported throughout the floating nation:
-All shield integrity lost. Unknown forces advancing.-
He turns his head after a moment's pause to regard Yui, wondering for that half-moment what he'll see when he looks at her. Wondering, too, what she's thinking.
But she shakes her head, as if in response to what he's thinking.
"I already know," Yui tells him, seizing the hilt of her blade and slowly drawing it free. "Come. We need to hurry. There won't be much time."
Out of the two of them, only one can still shed blood with a sword.
"Where is Midori?" he asks, hurrying after her.
"In the private quarters. I am going to the Queen's side," Yui says to him, as she walks out through the door.
"I understand," he replies, before once again they each head their separate ways.