Description: Seven years ago, Frei Tsukitomi-Renard and his mother Isis had an argument, one that resulted in their separation and the divergence of their lives. In those seven years, neither has contacted the other, each afraid that the person they had become would be rejected, found wanting. But circumstances have forced Frei to step foot on the family's estate once more... and at last, mother and son have a chance to examine the bonds that connect them, and indeed their entire family. Seven years later, their story begins anew. ("The Moon's Three Treasures", Part 4)
Kyoto. A long time ago, it was the political and cultural center of Japan, the 'old capital'. Though many years have passed since then the city remains a surprising pastiche of old and new, the tops of five-story pagodas vying with the tops of squat, grey office buildings to get the eye's attention as it looks across the city. And indeed, there's plenty of city to look at; with the urban sprawls of Osaka and Nagoya crowding in, the area at the center of the country seems like nothing more than one big, cyberpunk-like urban sprawl... when seen from space, anyway.
The train ride from Southtown isn't a long one, Japan not being a very big country, but it's long enough that Frei, sitting idly at a window seat and watching alternating horizons of urban and mountainous green landscapes roll by, has more than enough time to rethink what he's doing. All sorts of stupid scenarios present themselves to him: fake an illness, or just walk out and leap off the side of the train, hitchhike his way back to the city. Give up on this enterprise of uncertain outcome, of high-cost risk and a low perception of reward. That he does none of these things, is able to stave off his tendency to give in to his whims, gives testament to just how serious he is about it... but the constant tapping of fingers on the window, nodding of the head, and mouthing of the words he doesn't know how to say, the nervous gestures, mean that perhaps he hasn't fully internalized that yet.
When at last the train hits the station, he disembarks and retrieves his single piece of luggage, a small bag that can't have more than a day or two of clothing. The meaning is clear: I'm not going to stay, I'm here to find out what I have to and go. Slung over one shoulder, he heads out of Kyoto's immense central train station and sets about finding a cab to the east side of the city and is treated to, in a sort of whirlwind stop motion way, memories of his youth. After a seven year absence the city seems alien and unfamiliar, but yet somehow the fusion of old and new styles, of an office building a few blocks from the gates of a Shinto shrine, appeals to something in Frei that disdains the normal. The cabbie attempts at least a few words of conversation, but the monk is silent. He only has so many words, today, and the stillness in his normally vibrant green eyes suggests that should he open his mouth, he might not be able to keep the entire thing from spilling out.
The cab leaves him on the city's far eastern edge, away from the buildings, away from the sprawl... a road leading up into the lush green hills outside the city. As it drives away and the sound of its roaring engine dopplers off, eventually the monk is left in silence, looking up the access road to his childhood home. The Tsukitomi estate looms not too large, but large enough, out of the greenery not far away. Rather than the roof of a huge central building, Frei recognizes the tops of the many smaller houses that make everything up, arranged like a square around a central garden. Even the sounds are the same: birds calling in the distance, the sound of running water from the creek that runs through the property and, indeed, through the center of the garden as well, cutting through gaps in the surrounding houses.
The gate looms large. He doesn't knock; he just pushes it open.
A servant on the other side's eyes widen, her mouth opens, and instantly Frei turns to her, shaking his head and putting a finger to his lips to silence her. Stunned but trained to heed the family that employs her, she simply nods, then runs off... perhaps to warn the others.
For his part, the monk simply looks out into the garden and says, in a clear but not loud voice: "...I'm back."
The main house of the estate lies silent, before Frei. A long moment passes. The seconds tick by. Then there is motion, finally...the soft sound of a door gliding open. A hand rests on the ancient frame, fingertips brushing against the ancient wood.
A figure stands in the doorway, half-shadowed by the overhang of the old house's foyer, partially illuminated by the afternoon sun. The rays of light, though, are enough to draw out the folds and colour of her formal kimono, the silk dyed a rich but dark purple. The woman looks at Frei, her eyes regarding him across the broad expanse of the garden.
Her face is still.
Like the younger man, her own features are of mixed ancestry, the blending of Asian and Caucasian traits to create a fine delicacy. There's differences in complexion, in hair colour, even in bone structure. Yet despite all that, and the separation of age, there is...a resemblence.
"So you are," replies Isis Tsukitomi.
Her lips move into a smile, though the expression does not quite extend to the rest of her. Her voice is quiet, understated, calm and controlled.
Betraying, perhaps, only the faintest trace of irony.
Whatever was left, whatever defenses had been put in place, crumble the second she enters his line of sight. Frei locks up, mouth closed, eyes dull, fighting against a sudden flow of memories and thoughts and feelings that he has kept dammed up ever since he left. Early ones, of the calm hands opposite him teaching him how to hold a sword. His teenage years, wondering why she had become so cold, wishing his father were there to draw them together.
Late ones, of the last argument they had, the last words they spoke to each other. On this very doorstep. He'd been holding a larger bag, then; she hadn't been amused, or happy, but speaking in the acidic and cold tongue that meant she was furious, a way of speaking that at least one of her three sons picked up later in life. Her fury had been ice; Frei's had been fire, to match the red hair he inherited from his father rather than the elegant creature standing here now.
Out of deference to politeness, he sets down the bag rather than letting it fall from hands that don't feel like they can close anymore. It slumps down with a sound that seems overly loud in the briefly silence, and then topples over from its own weight.
He leaves it there; while uncomfortable with servility, he knows the one or two housemaids left in the place will take it... somewhere. Perhaps not his old room, maybe a guest room. Perhaps they'll just leave it where it is, unsure how to react or what to do given the sudden turn of events. For his part Frei moves forward, stepping into the garden, the part of the house he'd always like the most, as if the surroundings will propel him forward. In the cab he was worried he wouldn't be able to stop if he said word one. Now... now he's not sure he can even produce word one in the first place.
But he tries.
"Why am I here..." he muses aloud, then shakes his head and turns back to his mother. "Forget it. I don't know that I'm here because of you. But there's some things I have to find out."
Something shifts in Isis' eyes, as she watches her son's approach. It's a subtle thing, a small thing, but her hand trembles faintly as she lifts it from the doorframe...before she brings it to her side, smoothing down the fabric of her kimono.
She continues to study him as he draws near. The expression on her face is still controlled, but...it is no longer so certain. The smile that came earlier is now forced, the strain increasing with each passing moment.
Her footfalls whisper against the floor as she melts back into the room, freeing the doorway and threshold for Frei to enter.
If the fact she must invite her own son to come home pains her, she gives no visible sign.
When she speaks, her voice is once again soft.
"And," she asks, with a curious lilt to her voice, "what would that be?"
She still hasn't called him by name.
For a second it's like she hasn't said anything, because Frei's eyes unfocus as he looks out across the rest of the house, all visible from the central vantage point, and he simply says: "Well, he's not here... if he was he'd have shown his face already." Yet somehow a lightness creeps onto his features and into his expression once that fact is stated. And indeed, for Frei it is a relief. He might be able to make this work, he might be able to face it all, if it's just him and Isis. Adding Kataki to the mix would be a little much.
A pause again, and then Frei turns around, regarding his mother carefully. She is, now as she ever was, like an alien to him sometimes. For a second the emerald-eyed gaze bores into her face, far too youthful for its own good, perhaps the one feature Frei actually DID inherit from his mother, as his own freckled face retains a youthful expression not indicative of his twenty-six years. But he gives up on that, and soon even gives a little hopeless laugh, shaking his head and pressing his fingers to his temples. "I never could read you. It was like staring at clouds, trying to make one of them take a shape if you kind of wanted to see it..." He lets that trail off.
Massaging his forehead for a second, Frei lets his hands drop to his sides and decides to just get to the point. Whatever happens beyond this point, happens. Even if Tran incensed him into coming, Kentou inadvertently pushed him into coming, Hotaru all but shamed him into coming though through no auspice of her own... Sakura's words come back to him. You're an adult, you know what's best. So he just dives right in. "Maybe it's not the prodigal son's place to say this... argh, no, ugh." Never at a loss for words? And now he is. Shaking his head, he just blurts out: "Kataki's not here, is he." It's a statement, not a question.
She doesn't reply immediately.
Frei's mother stands just beyond the open doorway, her body subtly angled. An invitation for him to approach the house, though she does not come out and say it.
A few more moment pass before Isis speaks, once more.
"No," she answers.
She turns, then, breaking eye contact, presenting her back on Frei. She takes a step deeper into the house, then another...leaving the door open behind her.
"Were you," Isis continues, as she walks, "expecting him to be?"
With her face turned away, he cannot see her expression.
Perhaps the entire relationship between these two individuals can be encapsulated entirely by the issue of the house. Isis, concerned and troubled that she has to invite in her own son... and Frei, who doesn't need an invitation to go anywhere, least of all here, so determined not to do it, and wondering why his mother is moving *away* from him.
Family bond, indeed.
Simple physics dictates that the monk step across the garden and into the main house, following his mother, because eventually she's just not going to be able to hear him... though should she bother to look back, Isis may find that her son is less comfortable entering that sanctum. After all... it's his house too, damnit. Just because he doesn't live there anymore doesn't erase 19 years of residence.
"No," is the honest reply. When in doubt, go with the obvious. At the edge of the door he stops, bending down and pulling his wooden sandals from his feet, leaving them at the door. The contrast that's left, as he steps over the threshhold, is tremendous... Isis with her elegant Japanese bearing, and her son looking like an Irishman dressed as a Chinese peasant farmer.
"I know where he is. He's in Southtown." There's a pause, and for a second Frei's mouth opens, ready to pour out a litany of his woes. He's in Southtown, alright. Cutting up his friends, messing with their heads, making everyone nervous and angry, not just at Frei but at themselves and at the world. He's thoroughly MESSED THINGS UP, and the rage of that statement, an echo of the fury Frei felt at Hotaru while she was seduced by the allure of power, flashes briefly behind his eyes.
He shuts his mouth, cutting it off entirely. Two can play that game.
"Do you happen to know," he says simply, adopting the dryly conversational tone of his mother, every syllable oozing the fact that he thinks she knows, but he has to ask her this way, "...why that is?"
And it is a game, very clearly. Isis moving away from her son, all but forcing him to pass beyond the grounds and into the house proper...that was a deliberate move, and it's clear Frei realises that. By now, Isis is standing a few feet away, facing the wall of the old home's foyer. In front of her hangs a brush painting, but her eyes don't seem to see any of the strokes, colours, or shapes.
She turns back, just enough to look at Frei once more.
And she flinches. It's a small thing, almost unnoticable, were it anyone else. It's a sign of hesitation, so at odds with her regal bearing. A weakness she would not allow, under normal circumstances. But here, now...
Her eyes close. She takes a breath.
"Your brother," she says, "is his own man. I am no longer responsible for him, if that is what you are accusing me of."
Isis pauses, her eyes still shut.
"What," she asks, "did you -think-?"
It's difficult for her to admit, even to herself. But she's never understood her eldest either. Frei...so emotional, so wild, so unlike herself.
So like his father.
The echoes are in his head, when Frei realizes his attempt to argue with his mother on her footing has resulted in first blood, absolutely unintentionally. Of her voice demanding to know what he was going to do with his life, wanting to know why he would throw it away... of his voice screaming back, choked with tears and fury, that it was his life to throw away and nobody else's. He wonders, if only for a moment, if Kataki left with the same kind of shouting, or if he just said he was going on a trip and walked out the front door.
For the first time, it strikes him that her demands were a result of her caring what happened, even if he knows now that her concern was somewhat misplaced. It's enough to shut him up for longer than he'd expected.
When the monk finds his voice again, he doesn't have the energy to actually look at his mother when he responds. However, despite his uncertainty, there's iron in his voice. "I don't blame you for how any of your sons turned out," he begins, and the implication is clear: my problems are my problems, not yours. "That needs to be said. I don't think you sent him across the country with a shopping list and a packed lunch. But he's there, and he's hurting people. Not just with a sword, either. I don't know why. He showed up where I work, had so many kind things to say, mostly that I was weak and useless and a disappointment." Frei's voice becomes dangerously singsong at the end of that statement, the sort of musical lilt that suggests he's teetering on the cusp of hysterical laughter.
After a moment, he shrugs. "I might be all of those things. I probably am a disappointment, and I'm not really good for much." For a second, eyes shut tight, thoughts going to Kentou, his first real student... his only success, the scar on his forehead behind the headband as proof. The tiny inner voice wonders if he really is all those things, if that's really a case for disappointment, for being useless. To the woman in front of him...? Probably. That's the thought that's kept them apart for seven years.
"I needed to know he wasn't here. Can you understand why? I needed to *know*. Because I've got to go back and do something about it. But I needed to *KNOW*."
There's another pause, as Isis considers this. Having listened quietly to her son's tirade, she appears...preoccupied by thoughts. She brings her hands up, her fingers intertwining, the trailing sleeves of her kimono brushing against each other with the soft sound of silk.
She opens her eyes, finally, lifting her head.
He even looks like Dana, Isis thinks, as she gazes at her son.
"I understand," she replies, her enunciation precise. But her eyes lend the lie to the words. She's not sure if she really does.
Or if she really knows what to say.
She breathes, then, air passing her lips.
"Frei," she says, finally.
"You are not," she states, before stopping, mid sentence, searching for the right phrase. She ends up repeating what Frei himself used.
"...weak. Or useless."
The words come slowly. It isn't easy for her, but Isis says it despite her misgivings, as she looks straight at her estranged child.
"And I suspect," she carries on, "your brother is...dissatisfied...at the suggestion he may be more of a disappointment than you."
Not exactly a compliment, not quite. Nor an apology. But an admission, all the same.
Somehow, he was prepared for anything but that. In many ways the prophecy was self-fulfilling. He kept away because he knew she wouldn't approve. Does he REALLY think he's weak, or useless, or a disappointment? He isn't as strong as some, but is that weakness? He's frivolous and doesn't spend his days doing big important things, but is that uselessness? He's not the swordsman he was raised to be, but... is he a disappointment?
The thought that echoes in his head, however, as he rounds on his mother, eyes alight with both energy and the beginnings of tears he can't control, is given life in the broken and anguished voice that erupts from his body before he can exert any sort of control over it.
"How would you know?!" he suddenly explodes, fists clenched. He didn't want to be the hypocrite, he didn't want to throw the blame. He could have said something in seven years and he didn't. But lanced as he is, by of all things her ADMISSION that he isn't weak or useless, the words come out without regard for all the defenses he built for himself coming in. "I... I trained so hard! I tried to fill the *gap* that got left, and I did, finally. Not that you'd know! Are you telling me all this just to placate me?!"
Her head snaps up, then, her hands separating, fingers half-curling - a reflex action, so ingrained it's almost unconscious. Before she even knows it, before she even can /think/, she's reaching for a blade sheathed at her side, feeling for the familiar heft of lacquered wood and rayskin.
But Isis freezes, quelling the gesture. There's no sword there. The only thing at her waist is the looping fabric of her kimono's obi.
Yet she knows...were she wearing one of her blades, she would have come dangerously close to drawing on her own son.
Isis stills her trembling hands, with a distinct conscious effort of will.
"I don't," she snaps, curtly.
Then she smoothes her face, wiping away any trace of anger, forcing herself to calm down. She says it again, voicing it again.
"I don't know."
Her breathing, having quickened, slows back to a measured pace, as she addresses him.
"But I have seen your appearances on...that television programme."
The twist of her lip makes it clear she doesn't entirely approve, the reference to SNF pronounced with distaste. But is it disapproval of Frei, or simply the medium?
"It would seem," she says, "you've become successful...not because of me, but despite me."
She shakes her head, once.
"How do you think that makes me feel?"
He sees it. Frei sees it, but thinks less of it... mostly because he's done it himself lately. The hands coming to roughly waist height, right hand turned out, left arm in a rough angle. To Hotaru, who had pushed him so far he didn't think he'd ever travelled that far, he fell back on that motion. It's the battou stance, the one cut one kill stance. It's the physical manifestation of 'this argument is over', because it Isis HAD a sword, if Frei HAD a sword, in either situation, that would have been the end of it. A flash of silver and it's done.
"Do you know... of course you don't." A breath sucked in, face turned toward the ceiling, toward a God he doesn't really believe in, toward a Heaven he knows is uncaring in its need for balance. But he feels it, as people have told him they feel it... the need to be reassured by some outside force, the steadying hand as you cross moss-covered rocks, the raging river of unknown destination ready to rush you away. "A girl, one Kataki chose to... accost. She said something to me in the heat of the moment. 'What is so special about you that you're above learning what they learned?'. As if... as if I did what I did, became what I am, to SPITE you somehow." It was his first clue to why Kataki had bothered to show up, why he was doing what he was doing. Why are you so special, so arrogant?
His head drops down, and a hand comes up, wiping raggedly across his eyes, trying to find some composure and utterly failing. "Is that really how you see it? That... that I did all this to get back at you, somehow? Do you think that's why I left at all?"
"I've wondered," Isis concedes.
She doesn't deny it.
Nor is she able to remain so cool, so impassive. She can't remain sanguine, not in the face of such accusations. Not when her son's words strike deep, drawing wounds deeper than blood. Not when there's a spark of truth in his words, no matter how painful.
Her gaze pierces him. She returns his look measure for measure.
"But do you think," she asks, her voice rising, "so little of /me/?"
"I think," Frei says carefully, trying to master his emotions long enough to form a coherent sentence, "that we're exactly where we were seven years ago. I *think* that to you the style is everything and you've never understood that it might not be everything I want." He pauses, biting his lip. "Does it matter who thinks little of the other anymore?"
There's a pause, and Frei takes a step closer to his mother... brave, perhaps, given her recent physical response, but he's willing to risk it. "Whether the things you just said were just to soothe me, or if you actually believe them, the truth is I didn't do any of this to hurt you. I did it for me; because there was this hole in my life I had to fill. If it hurts to know that Musou Tenkei wasn't enough for me, then I'm... I'm *sorry* that you were hurt. But I'm not sorry for what I've done, even if it's selfish."
She makes a small sound. It might be a laugh, but if it is one, it is a stillborn thing, dying bitterly before it even escapes her throat.
The rest of the house is silent. This is an old building, of traditional timbers and paper screens. Sound carries through the building, but their voices are all that's heard. The servants and family retainers might be listening - they can't help but listen, with the volume of the words being exchanged. But they know to be silent.
Isis doesn't have that luxury. Not here, not now, not confronted like this. A part of her wants to lash out at him - verbally, if not physically. But she doesn't move. She stands, looking across the hallway, across the expanse of wooden floor.
She wants to deny it. She wants to say he's wrong.
She doesn't. She can't.
"And have you," she says, finally, "filled this...hole?"
Isis stares at Frei, her lips pressed together.
"Who have you /become/, Frei?"
It's Frei's turn to flinch at the sudden vehemence of the words, but even as he recoils somewhat from the emotion, he knows that it's a good question. Who has he become? Isn't the question that's been hammered into his head over and over again lately effectively that? Is what you are now worth what you've had to give up to get there?
He suddenly... laughs.
Leaning forward, a hand over his face, fingers splayed on his cheeks, up into his dark red bangs. "You... hahaa... it's the Master. 'What is the true Kung Fu, grasshopper?" It was the voice in his head, the followup to her question. He *can't help it*, and his convulsive, half sob, half laugh response indeed speaks to that feeling of helplessness, of a response totally unbidden, unfiltered.
A moment after, he gets control of himself, and seems tired as he tries to match his mother's solemnity, even if not her mood. "I... did I really 'become' anything?" What did he tell Ayame, tell Sakura? 'Are you comfortable, wherever you are?' 'Not always.' 'I'm always... me. You can count on that.' "Things changed. I didn't fight with a sword anymore, I learned a different way. Not better or worse, but different. I'm a friend, a teammate, a teacher, a student... If I became anything, I became myself more truly. I didn't transform, I transfigured... I *refined*."
Isis stares at her son, her expression unchanging for a moment. Then she shakes her head, the tension draining from her muscles, her shoulders shifting, her features relaxing.
"Now," she observes, "/you're/ sounding like one of those movies."
The way she says it makes it clear she doesn't care for his so-called cinema. Yet there's the faintest trace of dry humor colouring her voice. It isn't a joke she would have made, but still.
Still.
She looks at him carefully, her eyes searching, as if trying to gauge the man that stands in front of her. There's so much that's familiar. It would seem he's hardly aged a day since he walked out of her life, the better part of a decade ago. The clothes are different, but his face, his bearing, the irreverance...and that damned spitting likeness of his father.
And yet...
And yet.
"Refined, you say. I'm not making fun of you," Isis says, quietly, "but...I don't know who it is that stands before me."
"I don't know if I ever did."
"That makes two of us," Frei says with a resigned sigh. He's not afraid to admit that, and his questions are much the same. Who is this woman, really? What does she want... from Frei himself, from her sons, from the world? "You... I never knew what you wanted, other than for me to learn the sword. That was clear, but it was all I knew. And when I found out that wasn't..." He pauses, then shakes his head. "When I was 19, and felt empty inside. I needed something else, and the study of the sword didn't fill it. And then the only link I had to you, the only thing that made you make *sense* to me was gone."
But there is a link. Oh yes... he found one.
Blinking in sudden surprise, Frei realizes that he never explained what happened. He didn't fill in the six year gap after he left, and even the year after in Southtown his mother only knows through television. And indeed, as he was worried about in the cab, it all comes tumbling out.
"China. I went to China. I studied... religion. Philosophy. Thought. Anything... because that was the empty hole. I needed purpose. I found a man... I never knew his name other than to call him Master. And over six years he taught me about a lot of things. About life, about philosophy... about chi energy and how the world works."
Were this any other conversation, he'd have done his little trick by now, palm out, some mote of colored light dancing there. He doesn't, not now; perhaps speaking with others it's appropriate, even helpful; now it seems flashy and silly, ostentatious. "At first it didn't have anything to do with fighting. But eventually he said I'd hit my limit as a scholar. I needed to fight, to use the practical, to put ideas into use. So I did. I... created, adapted. Made my own style. In Southtown I used it for a year, toyed with it, learned new things, included them. When I went back to visit, to show him... he'd died. I buried him in the mountains he lived in and I may be the only living person who remembers him, or his teachings, now."
His breath catches, then he takes a few gulps of air, as much as from the sudden clutch of grief at his heart as from having said so many words in a long, unbroken string. "It's been a while since then. But... I feel like..." He stops, unable to say it, but the implication is clear. This is how you felt. This is why you worry. This is why tradition is so important.
This is why I was wrong.
Isis closes her eyes. She lifts one hand. Her fingertips play over the planes of her face, down her brow and the slope of her nose. She inhales, drawing a breath, and holding it in. When she lets it go, it rushes out all at once, an explosive release.
So many words. So many words left unsaid. For all his eloquence, Frei is unable to continue. Leaving it to her to speak, it appears.
"Remembering," Isis whispers, her voice hardly audible, "the teachings. Respecting what has gone before."
"But theory and teachings...must be living. They must be carried on."
Her voice is still barely perceptible by the ear.
"That's what I've lived by," she says, "discipline, service, dedication..."
She looks at Frei, now. So far, she's asked him so many questions. Yet is that so unusual? At the end, she is still a mother.
Isis trails off.
"I am glad," she says, finally, "you have done well."
You've done well. I'm proud of you. Congratulations.
Words he always felt were directed at the twins and never at him. Nothing he ever could do was good enough, nothing he ever did was worth it. Why? Where did that feeling come from? Did it really come from Isis, completely one way, or did it come from himself as well... his intuition of her disappointment, or perhaps, his need to be the person she wanted conflicting with his need to be himself.
Kataki's words, reflected through Hotaru: 'Who would be proud of who you are now?' His answer was: me. But it was never enough. And now the answer is: me, and her.
"I feel like... that's the first time you've ever said those words to me," the monk bites out, body unstable as he pingpongs back and forth between emotional state after emotional state, unable to settle, unable to focus. "But logic says that it can't be. Maybe this is the first time I've ever felt like you *really believed it*."
There's a pause, a long one, before he speaks again, hand coming to his face, wiping fading tears from his left eye. "I'm sorry that finding myself meant hurting you. I'm sorry that I didn't understand the things you *just said*, things I've never heard you say before. I didn't try to understand you and then when I finally was someplace I could try, so much time had passed... I was afraid you would just turn your back." Only Alma's heard him say it so far, and now she has too.
"I..."
She doesn't manage to complete the thought, the words dying as they pass her lips. Why is this so hard? She curses herself, a pained expression crossing her face. She's a woman who prides herself on her control. But what is it about her son that renders her so incapable of that? She was never able to restrain her temper, her impatience, when he was a child under her training. And now that he's finally returned, after all these years, why is it so hard to bridge that gap?
"I knew where you were, the first time you appeared...on those programmes. Your commercial fighting appearances. I saw them. I could have contacted you, I could have."
Isis repeats it, to herself as much as Frei. Her eyes are dry, but only just. She's a young-looking woman, seemingly much more youthful than her near-sixty years. But all of a sudden, she feels so terribly old.
"But I was afraid," she admits, ruefully, "that you would turn from me."
He should be surprised. It's such a perfect Gift of the Magi situation, both mother and son feeling the same thing, repelling each other like similarly-charged poles of two magnets. But in reality, he's not; this entire situation has been so strange, so revelatory, that finding this out is more like the last brick falling into place.
"I don't know what I would have said," Frei responds, as honestly as he can. "I know that when I left, I was angrier than I've ever been. I've only been that *furious*, that killing mad, one other time in my life, and that... haha, Kataki brought it about. By accident, but it happened. And then that rage drove me back here." His eyes shut, his lips making a set line for a moment before he elaborates. "And what made me so angry at Hotaru was the knowledge that she was so wrapped up in herself that the people who loved her, cared for... we weren't worth her time. She rejected us. I want to believe I was never that person, and that's why I was so incensed."
What did he tell Tran? 'And this is why I'm jealous! Because you get angry and it makes you do something! I get angry and I JUST. GET. CONFUSED!' The final straw that sent him back here, a man who is perhaps closer to Frei than he knows, telling him to shut up and do something.
"I thought about you, and the twins... all the time. It was impossible NOT to. But I didn't do anything. You didn't do anything. Nobody knew what to do." He laughs... suddenly, sharply, perhaps even bitterly. "I wonder if Kataki knew this would happen. Do you think that was his goal all along? To get me back here, to make this conversation happen?" It's hard to tell if the sound of his voice, the upward intonation that implies a question, is hope... or sarcasm.
The name 'Hotaru' is meaningless to Isis, though from context she can only guess it must be the girl Frei confronted on television. She would ask, she would inquire more. But now is not the time. In the face of her son's questioning, now...
Isis shakes her head. Now that the first steps to breaking down that old wall have been taken, she cannot stop now. Not when there is so much more that needs to be said, old grievances, old wounds never healed.
"I have never understood you," Isis says, "but your brother...I understand too well."
To her regret.
"No," she disagrees, "I think...he is simply jealous."
Isis pauses, then, wondering how far to go. She averts her gaze, lifting her head to study the arching beams of the rafters high above the front room.
"He resents you," Isis continues, "and perhaps me. I doubt your brother would want reconciliation between us. For I may have given him the idea..."
She chooses her words carefully.
"...that you are more worthy than he."
For the second time Frei's mouth opens to say something, and then shuts it. His comment, that Kataki was *always* his mother's son, doesn't need saying... and Isis' admittance of the fact tells him more than he would ever have deduced himself about his mother's knowledge of her own faults. It's hard not to see it. And if he wanted to, he could hurt her right now... badly... with a poorly chosen word or two.
He chooses not to. Many were concerned about Hotaru's fiery red energy, that murderous power, and indeed it is something Frei himself is going to bring up with her the next time they meet. But perhaps the people who made the most impact didn't care about the power, and instead worried about her behavior. Her thoughts and feelings. The mind and heart that control said power.
"That... explains a lot," he finally says. And it does. "Thren's in America, after all, and out of sight out of mind. But he'd be worried... hahaaa." There's only one thing she can possibly mean when she says 'worthy'. At least, only one thing Kataki would care about, and the one thing Frei couldn't 100% give up so long as he and Isis were still alive.
In a way, his mother's statement is as much flattering to him as indictment of his brother.
"He can't take wholly after you, then," the monk says, turning the side and tilting his head to regard his mother with a faint smile. "He doesn't have any restraint, or any control. He's doing what he wants without thinking about anyone else. A bit like a certain 19 year old I remember."
Isis smiles wanly. It's a small smile, hardly much of one at all. But it's a genuine one, for all that, speaking more than words alone can convey. She bows her head, acknowledging the point. When she looks up, the expression is still on her face, still there as she regards her eldest child.
"You didn't know me when I was young," she says, pointedly.
The thought of Isis Tsukitomi being a willful and emotional youngster seems almost impossibly distant compared to the calm and restrained woman standing here, clad in expensive silks with her hair pulled back.
"And..."
She looks at Frei, /really/ looks at Frei.
"To me, you will always be your father's son. But for better or worse, I think, you've inherited my stubborness."
She makes a small sound, breath through clenched teeth.
"Your brother probably fears you've inherited more than that."
It's true. He didn't, and some part of Frei has always wondered what it was that brought the woman he knows as his mother together with the man who was his father: artistic, scatterbrained, exuberant, sensitive. The idea that she used to be someone a little different... oh, it explains a lot. He grins, despite himself. "I'll take that as a compliment. You'd be amazed how useful it can be sometimes."
Still. Inherited more than that, huh. He reaches behind his head, unknotting the headband that's become part of his iconic look on the fighting circuit, and letting it drift into his palm, dangling. The scar on his forehead, to the right of the center line of his face, isn't large, but against the cast of his skin it's prominent. Even though Isis is looking intently at him, his vision is off to the side, as is typical as he thinks things through.
Eventually, though, he turns back to his mother, one eyebrow raised curiously. "I haven't. But he hasn't either, has he?" A pause, and then he decides to go for broke, and says: "...can I ask why?"
While Frei might be looking to the side, Isis' eyes are on her son. She stares straight at him, watching every little motion. Her pupils flicker. She blinks, once, lashes moving, as she observes the healed wound once hidden by the headband. There's a story behind that. She can feel it, almost instinctively.
"You may," she replies. He deserves the answer. She owes him that, at the very least.
"But first," Isis asks, "can you tell me...why do you..."
Her eyes are still on that scar.
"...fight?"
The weight she gives the word makes it clear she means more than just appearances on that SNF television programme, or that Neo League circuit.
"Why have you chosen this life?"
Now he's in familiar water, at least. An actual smile comes to Frei's face at that question, perhaps because it implies that Isis cares about the answer. It's not an imprecation wrapped up in a question, as he was wont to accuse her of in his youth. He turns back to face his mother, the headband held in his hand fluttering a bit in the movement and then otherwise lying still. If he notices the arc of his mother's gaze, Frei says nothing to betray it.
For a second, he pauses, caught in a memory of Remy, the lanky fighter with a chip on his shoulder, for given values of 'chip' measured on a geologic scale. 'If you're so different, then... WHY ARE YOU HERE?!' 'Because I want to be.' Is he a fighter? Or just someone who fights? What is the 'family' he told Remy about? Is it the fraternity of people who've chosen this life for themselves, the dominant majority of Frei's social circle, even his blood relations?
"Because... I want to know things." His voice is light, airy... as if the answer is coming to him in some sort of dream or hyponotic state, eyes distant. "Because I found one thing in my life I was actually good at... something I could do well. To really understand it I had to become a fighter, so I did. Not because I enjoy beating people up, but because the world is so *huge*. 'Oh brave new world that has such people in it', right?"
Isis laughs.
Not a mocking laugh, but one of genuine bemusement, entirely unforced. She stops quickly, though, both because it's so at odds with her usual face, and because she's aware Frei might take it the wrong way. This is the first time they've talked since he walked out of their home, years ago. And perhaps the first time they've ever really talked in a meaningful fashion.
"Right," she murmurs, her eyebrows arching. It does much to soften the severe lines of her face.
"Threnody, dear Threnody," Isis says, referring to Frei's brother, the younger of the twins, "does not enjoy the art. He practices it, he is capable, but he does not love it. To him...it is rote memorisation of movements. A skill, an exercise, but nothing more."
Her visage darkens, then, her face conveying unpleasant thoughts. Her eyes grow distant, unfocused. She faces Frei, but sees someone not him.
"Your -other- sibling," she says, quite pointedly omitting his name, "loves it too much. For the wrong reasons. He loves power. He loves violence. And that is all he cares about. For that reason, he is not...and will never be, the master of Musou Tenkei-ryuu."
Her attention returns to her eldest child.
"But you," she says, "but you...are different."
He answered her question, so she answered his. The answer makes Frei's face darken in concentration and preoccupation. Had they been in a position to have this discussion before, Frei probably could have told his mother exactly the assessment she gives of Thren, perhaps the one of the twins who might have made this conversation happen years ago if he'd had the drive. Just enough of Isis and just enough of their father, neither his crazy older brother or his self-important twin. Secretly, the monk thinks that he's headed for great things... and perhaps more importantly, his mother seems willing to let him pursue that, a change that warms his heart.
"A long time ago, I'd have told you that a... a soulless art like Musou Tenkei would deserve someone like Kataki." His voice is quiet but intense, thick with the monk's surprise at his own past vituperative thoughts. But he puts up a hand to forestall further comment as he keeps going. "Looking back on it now, I thought that because it was the only way of fighting I'd ever known. Now... how many have I seen?" Sakura's improvisational Ansatsuken. Alma's passionate kung fu. Jiro's full-throttle brawling style. Even Mimiru's self-created superheroic persona. None remotely like the other, and none like his own. "I didn't appreciate its potential, maybe. But how easy could it have been for me to have fallen into the path he took?" Frei asks, suddenly shifting to Kataki, the focus on this little tirade. "You might have hurt him pretty bad, if you did what I think you did. If the style is all he's known, to be denied the right to learn it fully, and to hear that the prodigal child who abandoned it would be an... alternate choice?" He lets that trail off.
However, for a moment he looks away, up at the ceiling. What has he learned from all this? What did he tell Kentou? 'The happiness of today is built on the pain of yesterday.' That's right. Suffering now is strength tomorrow. "But he needed to be hurt, so I wouldn't feel bad about it. We are different, you're right. When I was confused I found something else, I made comparisons... I let myself think that what I already knew might be wrong. Kataki... he's just thrashing about because being wrong isn't an option. And since I'm the center of that doubt, he hates me... more than anything else."
"He hates you," Isis replies, "because you /cannot/ be right, and he /must/ be. He hates me, because I have denied him what he sees as his birthright, but he will not see why he is not ready."
Her amusement of a moment before is gone, though what replaces it is not anger or ire, but simply a kind of resignation. She does not correct Frei's implication that she refused Kataki training, refused him the instruction he would need to attain mastery. Indeed, by her words, she seems to confirm what Frei says.
"That you feel sympathy for him..."
Isis closes her eyes.
"Once I would have called it weakness. Yet...he is still your brother. And my son."
She bows her head, conceding the point. But she looks up, immediately after, meeting Frei's gaze.
"You understand, then."
It's a statement, not a question.
Frei looks back. She's asking a lot. He can hear every question that's been presented to him so far. Making the point to Kataki is the easy one, and it's the one he'd been planning on anyway. There's no way he could just let his brother get away with what he's doing with impunity. That much is clear. But the second request is something bigger, something he's not ready for. So in true fashion, he ignores it... or at least tables it for the time being.
"Don't... I'm sympathetic, but that doesn't change how angry I am." He pauses, taking a deep breath. He is angry... very angry, in fact. Yet there's a calm at the center of it, a rock surrounding by a churning maelstrom. But unlike his past brushes with anger, it's not looking to drown him... it's looking to drown someone else. "It's a new feeling, angry. For the longest time I tried so hard to purge myself of negative emotions, because I felt like... they were beacons for negative things to happen. Yet at the same time I would tell people that there is no real good and evil, just points of view." He looks down at his hand holding the headband, closing his eyes for a moment. "But I was doing it for myself. Angry, sad, all bad for you, negative. Value-laden."
There's a pause while he turns back to look at his mother, smiling faintly, meeting her gaze. It's not a gaze that wavers; and perhaps, Isis might see more of herself in Frei than just simple stubbornness. "I don't regret it. I think my being at peace helped others who needed to work out their rage." A brief image floats through his mind, of Ayame and her working through her issues. 'You have to be a little crazy to live in the world nowadays.' "But it also kept up apart for seven years. So yes, I'm going to confront him, and I'm going to... explain my point of view."
And now the question can't be avoided, not anymore. He takes a deep breath, looking his mother square in the eyes. "I... you know, my life turned around when I decided to take the things around me, and make them part of my life, rather than the other way around. I don't know that I've accomplished much... not anything noteworthy. But I've helped others, and I've done what I can. But I'm not willing to give up my way of doing things..." He pauses, and his voice becomes quiet. "Does that make sense? I'm myself, no matter where or when. I can't stop being myself any more than you can."
"Can you," Isis questions, "are our natures fixed and unchanging, ever to be so? For if they are, then why confront your brother?"
Her eyes flash, as she reflects on her own memories. Her hands move, of their own accord, adjusting the set of her kimono, straightening the loops and folds of cloth. Her fingers stroke the soft embroidered silk, feeling for the delicate patterns.
"Existence as we perceive it," she recites, as if quoting something from the hazy depths of recollection, "life as mutable and incorporeal as the morning dew..."
She breathes deeply.
"Still," she says, "the perception is what matters. The eyes must see."
She looks at Frei. When she speaks, her voice sounds as if it carries both sadness and joy, both hope and regret.
"Maybe I have been blind all these years."
Deep in his heart, he knows this might not be smart. It's a bit like approaching a wounded animal. Frei's childhood memories of his mother -- athletic, singularly tall and high above him, a graceful and perfect 'sword princess' -- flood back, and he's reluctant to approach her... but when he does, it surprises him to find his green eyes level with her face, despite his short stature.
He hopes to draw her into an embrace, something they likely haven't shared since even longer than the seven years they've been apart... something hearkening back to the days in which they would stand outside this building, in the garden, together. Isis holding the family's honor sword, 'Red Lotus', and a young Frei struggling under the weight of the wakizashi 'Violet Lightning', the same blade hanging now at Kataki's hip.
"Mom..." he says, finally, quietly. "Yesterday is gone and it's not coming back." The second message is clear as the first: his father, their history, right now... none of it matters. "But that means that the person I was yesterday is dead, forever. Tomorrow I'll be born anew. What's good will stay; what's not won't. But the ultimate judgment of what makes up who 'I' am has to be up to me, and nobody else. That's... that's what I mean when I say that I'm myself, always."
For a moment, he's loathe to let go, but he must; if nothing else, Isis has reminded him that he can't let things go, not for an instant. He got the confirmation he needed; he got so much more that he needed but didn't know he needed. "The nice thing about being blind is how clear everything looks when you can see again."
She's silent. Shocked, almost, surprised. The gesture was...unexpected. She has never been an expressive person. How long has it been since she simply held one of her sons?
How long?
Maybe not since Dana died.
Her eyes shut. She shivers, then. Despite her martial discipline, her decades of training...she can't help but do that. Tense, at first, she slowly relaxes, then eventually returns her son's embrace.
"I..."
She trails off, the syllable unfinished. With effort, she brings it forth.
"...I'm sorry."
It's not an easy thing for her to say. Something she never /expected/ to say. Never felt she needed to.
Until now.
At last, mother and son having separated, the 'normal' Frei, the one that is known in Southtown, the one his mother has seen on Saturday Night Fights, the one that Kataki hates... the man that is the product of such a history, such a tradition, molded by this conflict, tempered by life... he makes an appearance.
Green eyes bright with enthusiasm, carriage confident but relaxed. Whatever happens, he can handle it. The only thing that mars the image's picture perfection are the tears that run down his face, flushing his cheeks red and making the dots of his freckles stand out. But as far as he's concerned, they're fine with him.
"I am too. I wish I hadn't hurt you, and maybe Thren and Kataki too. But that was the me... and the you... of yesterday. Those two are gone, and now it's us." He reaches out, holding out the headband to her. "So here. Take it... maybe a memory of those people who are gone. And I... I'll take my memento from Kataki."
It might be strange. To anyone else, it might be. Isis, though, extends her own hands, accepting the gift, the token...the symbol.
Her fingers run over the strip of rough fabric. The material of the headband is so at odds with the expensive finery of her own clothes, rich and elaborate silks. But she cradles it as if it were worth more than anything.
Perhaps it is, in all the ways that matter.
"He is your brother," she says, quietly.
Frei nods at that, once, an acknowledgment. In truth, what he's received from his mother is no less than what she's expressed getting from him... and it's only the knowledge that he has something yet to do that is keeping him together. "I won't forget."
He steps back. Blinking, his turns as his foot hits something... and discovers his bag behind him. If Isis needed any proof that the servants were listening, that's it... but something about it strikes Frei as hilarious, and he starts to laugh... a light, bubbling sound, bright and clear.
He picks up the bag.
Half-turning, the bag over his shoulder, he looks at his mother and nods once. "Okay. New chapter."
A pause.
A step.
And at last, a promise. "I'll... be back."
He doesn't wait to see the response. He turns to go.
With his back turned, he doesn't catch her smile.
He does, though, hear her reply:
"I hope," Isis says, "it won't take you another seven years."
Log created on 09:33:38 04/16/2008 by Frei, and last modified on 22:38:44 04/16/2008.