Description: There's so much for Frei to deal with emotionally in the wake of the Southtown occupation: the death of his clones, the potential death of Jiro, the 'spiritual' death of Kula, and an invitation to take part in something to prevent that sort of thing from happening again in the first place. What he needs is time to think, and a new perspective. Finding himself returning to his home in Kyoto, Frei decides to ask his mother to help him work out a way to cope... but it looks as if she has unresolved issues of her own to work through as well.
The green, wooded hills surrounding Kyoto. Compared to the field of urban devastation that currently is Southtown, it's an entirely different world. Here in the throes of summer the air is dry, taking some of the oppression out of the heat. Lush greenery is painted colors of gold and orange by a sun setting over the horizon, and the chirping of crickets is the only background noise on the foot path that leads from the base of a hill outside the city, to Frei's family home at the top. For cars, there's a slightly winding paved driveway, but for those interested in foot traffic, a walkway of wooden boards and stairs makes its way up as well, a creek running alongside it down the hill. Obviously it's not as if the Sky Noah up and dropped him off on the highway and then flew off; a crew took Frei down in a drop vehicle and made sure he had transport to his hometown, then left him to his own devices.
Walking up the steps as he is, a travel bag of clothes (some borrowed, some bought) slung over one shoulder, Frei has time to reflect on the fact that he'd hoped his second visit home after an extremely long absence would be under better circumstances. The first time he came, disaster loomed and it finally spurred him to action. While good things came of it, in the end, the actual ACT was fraught with tension and worry, that gut-knotting feeling of uncertainty that accompanies putting onesself at emotional risk. Now, he's coming instead in the aftermath of disaster, a changed individual. A defining -- if not THE defining -- aspect of his everyday life has changed dramatically. He's had his morals tested, his faith in people put on the line. He assisted in something that can only avoid being called suicide through semantics alone. Whether through not knowing what to do, or simply having what you knew blown apart, the result is the same.
Yet despite this, a faint grin spreads across Frei's face as he nears the top. Fighters, warriors... people who think nothing of putting their bodies on the line. Yet the young sage expects that, should you ask any of them, they would call these moments -- moments of emotional instability -- far, far nastier to deal with than a simple punch to the face. The punch to the face doesn't ask difficult questions about morality and philosophy. Once you've dealt with it, it's over with. Stuff like this, well...
That mental ellipsis trails off as he reaches the top.
In a curious echo of the last time he was here, Frei doesn't bother with formality, knocking, or anything of the sort. He never lost his key, and the small number of house staff could never forget his face. The same maid who, over a year ago, had the bad fortune to be there when he arrived after a 7 year absence, happens to be standing right in the foyer as he walks in.
There's a moment of unstable silence as the woman looks right *past* Frei, eyes unfocused. Her gaze, naturally, settles briefly on his now-white hair, which does come as a surprise. And his gesture last time -- a simple touch to silence her, to keep his arrival a secret -- looms large in her memory, freezing the two in tableau for a moment. *Her* surprise strikes Frei so much that *he* is briefly surprised, blinking in confusion.
After a moment, however, he seems to realize what's going on, and laughs despite himself. "If you want," he says at last, "you can tell her I'm here."
Perhaps Kyoto was lucky in that regard. Surely it has its problems. No doubt a secret, dark circle of crime exists within its underbelly. But it didn't have Geese Howard. It didn't have the Syndicate. No, that specific burden belonged to Southtown and it was to that fighting capital of the world that war was brought. To see the comperative peace of Kyoto compared to the war-ravaged streets of Southtown is to step into another land all together. That the two cities are even geographically related seems a stretch to believe.
The young man's words spur the woman into action, as if she needed but a clue as to how he wanted things to play out this time. She makes haste, hurrying for one of the small buildings only to disappear around it rather than venture within.
Frei is given time to himself. Something he might have had in precious little supply since being collected from the disaster site in what was once Southtown Park. The estate has changed little. The atmosphere is the same. The buildings are the same. The landscaping no different than the year prior. Some things never change.
The maid comes back, unable to help but spare another glance to the shock of white hair atop his head before meeting his eyes once more. "Around back," she explains, clearly implying he should venture behind the same building she had vanished to go announce his arrival. A glance is made toward his bag, her hands clasped in front of her, one narrow eyebrow so very slightly arched. Does he intend to stay this time? Beyond that, Frei is left alone to make his way through the estate unescorted. He's not simply a guest here, after all.
If there's one thing Frei appreciates about his mother, it is her... Japanese-ness, for lack of a better word. The family certainly has enough money that they could have had a thoroughly modern Western-style house up on this hill, as is the rage for many families with comfortable wealth in modern Japan. Isis has aged gracefully; she has the figure to carry of well-style couture. In fact, the *context* all suggests that someone named after an Egyptian goddess despite her strongly Asian features would want to adopt a more modern look on life, and the accoutrements to match. But she doesn't. The family's home is very traditional; a square series of connected buildings surrounding a rock garden. Sliding paper doors. Of course there are natural amenities that make modern living possible, but by design or preference they're tucked away in unobtrusive ways. Isis doesn't wear slacks and a nice blouse; she wears a kimono in the house. She carries a sword.
There is something solid and refreshing about that, Frei observes, walking through the hallways. 'Remembering the teachings. Respecting what has gone before.' When they were... not on the best of terms, Frei thought of his mother's adherence to a Japan long gone as a sort of hidebound, stubborn inability to change her way of thinking. Since then, of course, he's come to appreciate her feelings as more devotion and dedication than fervor and ignorance. Frei himself is perhaps more mercurial in nature, but lately, the concept of a 'legacy' has loomed large in his mind.
A kind of immortality.
The white-haired man moves through the rooms of his childhood home on instinct. So little changes that he's confident he could walk through this building blindfolded if necessary, simply going by the feel of the air and floor, the sounds of the building. Eventually, he moves out and around the front gate to the back, as instructed. Who knows how his mother spends his time, anymore? Threnody is studying abroad in the United States, and Kataki... well. While he's not bothering his brother or his friends in Southtown anymore, the probability that he's *here* is close to zero.
There's a *thump* muffled by grass as Frei sets his bag down, finds a rock with a reasonably rounded top that can be a temporary chair, and sits down on it to wait. Pressing his hands into the stone, which is pleasantly cool in the afternoon heat, he turns his eyes to the sky.
Sound carries easily through the thin rice-paper doors and traditional wooden walls. He would be used to the silence that permeates the house. He grew up in it after all. Where quiet was valued above the sound of laughter or mirth. Where the soft slice of the blade through the air was part of the spoken language between the mother and her sons.
But a new sound resonates from one side of the house as well. Music. And not the soft strums of a traditional Japanese instrument such as the shamisen or koto either. But rather the hauntingly soothing sound of a cello soloist with the ever-present soft pops and crackles associated with being played on a traditional vinyl record. It's a piece from Bach and in spite its Western origin it seems right at home admist Asian paintings, original tapestries, and rice-paper screens.
Frei is made to wait for some time before the read door of the building slides open and Isis herself steps out. She looks unchanged in appearance. The same dark hair, the same face that has held onto its youth against all probabilities, the flowery, exquisite kimono. But she's wiping her hands even as she steps out onto the porch and then drops her feet down into waiting sandles one step at a time. The cloth in her hands is left to rest over the rail - its pristine white marred by what seems to be a mixture of colors.
The woman sets eyes on Frei. Perhaps she was warned about the whiteness of his hair for while her eyes settle on it, there is ia distinct lack of surprise in them - as if she were merely visually confirming something expected. Unhurried, patient steps are taken to close the distance between them and as she draws near, two items of interest might be noticed. First, the relief hidden deep in her eyes. Relief to see that in spite the constant news about the atrocities in Southtown, Frei is alive. And secondly, that weaved throughout her once perfectly ebony hair are strands of silver. For all the many constants the family estate may maintain, in the end, some things do change. His last visit was proof of that.
"This time only a year kept us apart." she observes, her hands disappearing into the sleeves of her kimino. "Does that mean the next interval will be only months?" The question lingers, her lips sparing no smile as she studies Frei intensely. "Welcome home, my son."
For a moment, his mother's appearance combines with the music, the the settings, and many other things to remind him that he comes from, to put a fine point on it, privilege. This isn't to say that in Southtown he lives in abject squalor; part of his job at the YFCC is in fact predicated on the fact that 1.) it doesn't pay much but 2.) he doesn't need to be paid much so it all works out. What money he gets paid for his apartment, for basic necessities, and a reasonable degree of spending cash. All of this circles back, he realizes, onto the fact that it is privilege that allows the luxury of philosophy. He can spend his days contemplating the universe, thinking deep thoughts, and the like without issues because he has the money to do so. His mother can... paint?... and listen to Bach, contemplating the nature of the sword, because she either earned or inherited the money that lets her.
To be without the luxury of security... it can be a scary thing.
Regardless of his thoughts, however, the young fighter knows that his appearance is likely to provide an antidote to nerves that were frayed with concern, but that Isis would almost entirely certainly kill herself before revealing to those around her. That he can see the relief in her expression as she enters is confirmation enough for that, so he keeps long-winded commentary or questions about her state and activities to himself and instead adopts a sheepish expression. It HAS been a long time, and if there's gentle teasing involved in his mother's response, he deserves it and doesn't rock the boat by refuting it.
"Yeah..." he starts, looking off to the side with brow furrowed, as if trying to figure something out, before he runs a hand through his hair and turns back to his mother. He doesn't get up from the rock he's sitting on, which to an outside observer would probably seem extremely strange... but to Frei, is just an acknowledgment of a family dynamic that has persisted in the face of all adversity. "Things, uh..." He pauses, and then looks down, shutting his eyes. "A lot of things have happened, Mom. But I'm sorry I didn't come back sooner."
To some few opportunites are given but they make enough of the chances to establish a name that goes down in history. To others, a lifetime worth of opportunities are afford them but they squander them, amounting to nothing. Being born to privilege gave Isis the chance to pour her entire life into her swordcraft. It allowed her to live behind the walls of an estate, ageless while the world moved on without her. It allowed her to judge from a distance the affairs of the world without having to get her hands dirty in the daily gruntwork that moves life on.
But when forced to reflect on what she had done with that time, forced to weigh what her son had become with his own pursuits, his own direction, she perhaps found herself lacking. Expression was achieved through the swing of the sword. Depth found in the sublties of each stroke. Life both discovered and ended with each draw of the blade. But maybe there was more to some of the other pursuits Frei had partaken of. The aging widow had, in her twilight years, found both a new release and a new source of regret when her hand took up the brush and began to paint... only to discover a whole new world of expression that could have been hers decades ago if only she had kept an open mind. To say that she had a talent for the art would be an undestatement, as if the brush were merely a blade of a different color by which to explore her soul.
The traditionally dressed woman stands close but not affectionately so, as if keeping just enough distance to maintain a safety-gulf between them. "Hm," is the extent of her reply to his excuse for not being able to make it back sooner. Sharp, attentive eyes settle on his shock of white hair briefly before meeting his own eyes again. "If you wanted to let me know you were all right, a letter would have sufficed." There's that edge again - that verbal wall of not quite gentle criticism used to deflect her own feelings at seeing the young man return to his home once again.
Her expression shifts slightly, a tug at the corner of her mouth, an innate attempt to keep from smiling, "But it is good that you came." Isis allows at last. This should be his home. He should feel drawn to it like any other. That her children have found places for themselves in the world beyond the family estate remains to be an issue the woman has to struggle with.
There's a second, the briefest of moments, where his mother's tone makes some defensive instinct of Frei's rise in the back of his throat. It is something that with time, he has come to see as merely another aspect of their relationship; that his mother is dry and deadpan where he is effusive and emotional. But it was those sorts of exchanges that, so long ago, forced Frei to give up the sword, on college, and indeed on his family in general. It's built in, and hearing it forces the past to bubble up. It says something, however, that even with all the stress he's under -- with everything inside that swirls like a vortex, a constant white-capped churn of emotional seas -- he's able to remind himself that this is just how she is, and stop before he says something he'll regret. "I'll remember that," he eventually says, with a hopeless smile. "I'll try to make it something interesting. Hello Kitty stationery, maybe." A jab as light as Isis' own; after all, the idea of this stately woman reading a Very Serious Letter from her son off Sanrio-created stationery is pretty funny.
His levity doesn't last long, however, and soon Frei is standing up from the stone, pacing a little bit. It's displacement activity, giving his body something to focus on... or maybe, he hopes that a little bit of physical motion will give him proper momentum to say the things that are actually on his mind. How could he begin to explain to his mother all that has happened? Frei isn't used to thinking of Isis as a spiritual person; in fact, his perception that she lacked a spiritual side at all is the source of their falling out in the first place. And so much that has happened is spiritual in nature... that, or simply unbelievable mad science. A mind control drug that amplifies one's chi focusing ability, administered by an international crime syndicate bent on world domination? A massive engine, designed to funnel the power of the natural world into assassins from *another* such syndicate, with a clone of himself at the core? He might as well tell her he was kidnapped by Martians, which is about as believable and, had you asked Frei before all of these events actually transpired, roughly as likely.
But she has a right to know, certainly, doesn't she? This is the woman who gave him life, and considering it was a life he almost lost more than once, she has an investment in knowing. But, as he continues to pace slowly, what will the knowledge do her in the long run? Will it be good for her, or will it just cause her pain...
The obvious answer is to stall for time.
"Were you..." Frei begins, turning and looking at the stained cloth, examining the color choices and making a guess at what she might be doing. His gaze then comes back to his mother, making him smile faintly. Only Isis Tsukitomi would attempt to paint and wear a smock over a kimono. "...painting?"
At the mention of Hello Kitty sationary, Frei provokes from Isis a sound that falls somewhere between the mild expression of amusement of 'Heh' and the derisive grunt of 'Hmph'; a twitch of her lip suggesting that perhaps she can't decide between frowning or humoring his jab with a trace of a smile. On that subject, nothing further is said as if he managed to disarm her of the matter all together.
He pushes up from sitting and begins to pace. That something is troubling him is evident and she could, if feeling he is taking too long to get to his point, ask him directly what burdened his mind so. But she won't ask. She'll stay distant, hovering aloof, jabbing as with the point of a verbal sword whenever he shows the slightest vulnerability. He'll beat about the bush, trying to find the words to express himself to the severe woman. It's the game they play and they've gone these rounds before and the woman is too set in her ways to break the rules now.
He turns it back around on her as he begins to pose his question, his eyes straying over the stained cloth draped over the railing the deck behind her. She doesn't follow his glance for she knows what he's about to ask. Why did she even leave it there? She could have simply taken another thirty seconds and exited without any clue as to how she had been passing her time up until his arrival. She doesn't want to answer the question she knows is coming... or does she? Maybe she wanted him to see, opening an avenue for him to discover something about her without her simply volunteering it outright.
He gets that mixed grunt in response again, the woman quiet for a moment after barely acknowledging that he had asked anything at all. Her eyes narrow on the smile at his lips, as if daring him to so much as try to make light of her new pursuit. But the glare of death passes quickly, her hands slipping from her sleeves to clasp together in front of her, revealing a couple specs of colored oil left where she had failed to quite clean it all up. "Perhaps."
She means 'Why yes, and at some point you must see the result.' But all Frei gets is a 'Perhaps.' And so the game goes on.
"I really hope," Frei says solemnly, meeting his mother's gaze, "that what is on your canvas completely stuns me." There's a second while he considers the things his mother would be least likely to paint, and there's an almost mischievous air to him once he thinks of a few and, with typical lack of restraint, rattles them off to her. "Big bright pastel daisies, maybe," the white-haired man offers, putting a finger to his nose in a gesture of faux contemplation. "Or my personal favorite, dogs playing poker."
The mental image alone makes the trip worth it.
As much fun as that is, though, Frei sighs afterwards and stops pacing, pinching the bridge of his nose. He recognizes that urge in himself and maybe even in his mother as well... the desire to keep the repartee up, to continue to play verbal tennis with his mother. In a way it's the foundation of their dynamic because that was how Isis communicated with her husband before his death; her eldest, taking so much after his father, is simply living out a prophecy in a way. But he also knows that in PART they both do it to avoid dealing with troublesome issues, as if sly wordplay and funny quips will somehow remove the enormity of the elephant in the room. As it stands, all it does is make them dance around it.
In these matters, as in a swordsman's duel, eventually someone must make a thrust with the intent of bringing it all to a close.
"I, uh..." He pauses, then looks up at the sky, slowly starting to shade from the burnt umber-orange of sunset to the hazy velvet purple of dusk at the edges. How much time has passed since he was dropped off in the city? Part of him wants to say 'Well can I stay a few days? We'll talk more tomorrow' but he stops himself from doing it, the physical signs of the effort showing as he brings a hand up and puts it over his face. He stays that way for a moment, breathing amplified to a surprisingly loud sound as his breath hisses through the spaces between his fingers.
Eventually, he finds the resolve to turn around and look Isis square in the face.
"I can't... I know it's not really your thing," Frei says, the qualification at the end of the statement rushing out quickly, as if he needs to absolve his mother pre-emptively if she has no idea what he should do. "But I... the things that happened in Southtown. I was involved in... some. And there was, uh..." Again, a pause, and a furrowed brow. Nope, the words haven't come any easier. And as is his way, in the absence of a convincing rhetorical explanation he simply opts for the plain, simple, stupid truth, delivered as succinctly as possible: "I got injected with some experimental drug, and when all was said and done I lost my ability to sense chi."
That all comes rolling out like a flurry
Give him an inch and he... Well, it's to be expected. Isis doesn't flinch, doesn't blush, doesn't say anything. There's just a single twitch of her right cheek and nothing more about what may or may not be found on the canvases tucked away within the home. Of the earliest attempts at taking oil to paper, to the learning strokes one by one, just as she had learned her precious swordsmanship, to the later images to come together and the more recent pieces scribed to the soothing melody of that deep cello.
Silence reigns as Frei considers where to go next. Isis seems to be providing no further openings, carefully hedging him into a corner until the only option is to put his cards on the table and get to the point. To that end, she simply watches him, her strong yet delicate hands clasped lightly over each other. He breaks the quiet but looks away toward the dimming sky above. Still she watches and waits.
He dances around the issue, trying to work his way into the proper words, and Isis exhales softly. Disappointment? Annoyance? Maybe a burning desire to tell him to say it already and get it over with? It's hard to identify exactly the source of her reaction to his stalling. Her eyes close briefly before opening again, still fixed on him, her lips neutral, her strangely youthful face showing signs of hidden weariness near her eyes.
Finally, in one sentence, he makes some progress. There isn't a strong reaction in the woman. So if he was expecting something he would be disappointed. He might as well have idly mentioned that he bleached his hair white for kicks and that it had no greater significance than that. What for him was a fundamental part of his essence is to her a strange fancy unique to him; a byproduct of his having left the family so many years ago to learn from a hermit rather than his own mother. She simply cannot comprehend the magnitude of the loss he feels - that sense of deafened detatchment he has suffered since he awoke in this new state.
She breaths in again then exhales softly. When she had told him that writing a note would have sufficed, her words carried two meanings. The more obvious tease concealed the directed point that she believed him to come for reasons other than to simply assuage her worried mind. "What is it..."
There is a pause as if taking a moment to form the exactly intended tone; a tone meant to hurt and scold, to cut to the point and slice away any of the side issues that he had stalled at along the way. "...that you want?"
The question actually takes him aback, for a moment; it's obvious from the expression on Frei's face that there's a little bit of... well, shock involved. Eyes a little bit wider, mouth open just a tiny bit as if immediate verbal response was formed and killed in the same electric instant. Mentally, of course, he's wondering: was dogs playing poker too much? It occurs to Frei, finally, that he may be guilty of exactly what it was Isis did (or so he felt) that drove him away 8 years ago in the first place: dismissing, intentionally or no, an endeavor to which that individual has invested serious emotional currency. He's forced to ask himself WHY a woman who, to his knowledge, has painted approximately never in her 50-odd years of life suddenly took up the brush.
His mouth closes again as that thought rings through his consciousness.
"Direction," Frei finally says, steelig himself and looking at his mother. When they last met, she admitted that she didn't understand his way of fighting, now; that she knows little to nothing about chi, that much is clear. But the impression he'd got, talking to her last year, was that she'd at least accepted Frei being on his own path. She'd watched him on SNF, after all... and perhaps motivated by Kataki's sudden aggression as it may have been, the entire thing was sparked by Isis admitting that, in the long run, Frei might prove to be a more worthy successor to the family style than either of the twins. In his mind, the pointedness of her question makes him wonder if he got that... wrong.
Clearly frustrated, he runs a hand through his hair -- naturally so, though his mother has no way of knowing that -- and looks off to the side and toward the ground, though his gaze is clouded, as if he's looking in a direction but not specifically AT anything. "It's... try to understand. This was a way of life for me for all these years, just as much as the sword is for you." At this, he looks up, wondering if his invocation of the simile is enough to start getting the point across. "Imagine if you drew your katana but you couldn't see it, couldn't feel the grip. You swing it and it's as if it's not there, but in your mind you KNOW it has to be... that's what it's like for me, right now. I'm a swordsman without a sword, Mom."
By the time he braves looking back to Isis, the woman's expression hasn't softened in the slightest. Not a scowl, not a glare, not even a frown. Her visage is one of intensity, her face and posture tense, as if she was bracing for something; something feared or something predicted. Did he misake the meaning behind her admission a year prior? When she offered the idea that Frei, not Kataki, would make the most suitable heir of the family's art?
Perhaps the statement was made in a wistful meloncholy. With her family moving away, uninterested in fighting or, sadly, /too/ interested in the violence associated with the art, maybe Frei was her only hope of a worthy heir. But though he had returned home a year before and the two seemed to reconcile, he was gone just as suddenly as he had arrived to confront his brother. Being the most worthy out of her sons by process of elimination does not make him qualified if he won't take up the sword.
But here he is again - circumstances bringing him back to this estate after unspeakable trials within the siege of Southtown, with his hair a shocking white, asking for direction. The severe woman offers nothing, her jaw merely tightening. He tries another route - a simile used to try and bridge the gap of understanding that seems to exist between the two of them. He compares his use of chi to the sword that means everything to her, hoping that such a comparison would help her understand the magnitude of his loss.
If that was the hope, it seems to have gone awry. For upon his final sentence, Isis's hand moves with the frightening speed of an upset mother into an open hand slap that would smack right off the young man's cheek cleanly should he not notice the motion fast enough. "How dare you," Isis murmurs, her breath strained, the woman clearly upset as if the strike didn't punctuate it clearly enough. "Only now do you turn to me for direction. My direction wasn't good enough for you all those years ago. But you come all this way for it now?"
Her hand would close, her eyes fixed on his for as long as he can muster focusing on her. "You. Are not. A Swordsman." The words are pointed, a reflection of pain harbored deep within. "That was what I tried to help you become, but you ran away. You chose your own way and I saw that. You clearly made it work for you which I did not expect. I accepted that. But that doesn't mean the sting of disappointment has lost its edge. You cannot invoke that title upon yourself /now/."
Her head would shake, her breath escaping between her lips through a long, bitter exhale. "Not yet."
The sound of the slap echoes in the actual room for a very short time; in Frei's head, it's less the short, sharp sound of one individual hitting another and more like a thunderclap. The sad part, for him, being that Frei is not a kid anymore, nor is he an inexperienced fighter. Isis moves fast -- she's got 20 years of experience on him, for one, and simply more natural speed -- but had he wanted to, he could have done something about that. This knowledge evaporates, however, in the face of the emotional side of the equation. The eldest Tsukitomi son is already on shaky emotional ground; to find a mother he expected to be receptive, or at least sympathetic suddenly on the warpath, hurt and lashing out -- especially given her typical demeanor -- is so jarring that even had he wanted his body to react, it wouldn't have.
For a second he stares at her, glassy-eyed; he's in too much stunned surprise to even bring a hand up to his cheek, which -- thanks to the pale complexion he inherited from his *other* parent -- is nicely reddened under the freckles. How do you even start? Logically, of course, Frei knows what's gone wrong. He was -- is -- a philosopher by trade, someone interested in the science of culture. He's read his Foucault, his Gramsci, his Althusser. Language is a symbolic system; all humans do is put form to the syllables and agree, through culture, on their common meaning. Perhaps that was the mistake, after all; the simile, as a rhetorical device, is even more dependent on shared meaning than simple communication. Frei, using the word 'swordsman', meant only to say: a man with a sword. I'm a fighter bereft of a weapon, in other words.
It is obvious that to Isis, the word 'swordsman' carries so much more with it, so much more semiotic baggage. Once the red mist of emotion drains away and his logical mind starts to catch up, Frei ducks his head, putting his fingertips to the bridge of his nose, and exhales a slow breath.
"It was just a simile," he says, proving that regardless of actual evidence that it's not a good idea, Frei simply forges ahead with the stupid, honest truth (as he sees it) of the situation. His hand comes away from his nose and rubs the slapped cheek, finally; there's an almost comical expression on him as the act mashes his cheek upward and forces his left eye into a partial squint. "But you're right. I'm not a swordsman. I didn't..." He pauses, then shakes his head. "If I walked in here demanding that I wouldn't be any better than Kataki was. But you have to understand that what I *meant* is that I'm a warrior without a weapon, Mom. And..."
And what? Does Frei really need to fight? Maybe. He doesn't enjoy the exercise for its own sake; unlike so many of the people he knows -- Hotaru, Kentou, Mizuki, and Sakura being prime examples -- he doesn't exactly strive to become the best *fighter* he can be. It was always a means to an end. What's changed? There are things he needs to protect, but there are others just as capable. Couldn't he stop? He'd asked Adelheid Bernstein for time to sort things out, to get his head clear. The Einherjar Initiative... it could use him. He has -- had? -- talents that could make a difference. But it's not the life he would have chosen for himself.
For a second, the image of his clone, willing to let himself die to prevent a tragedy with potentially global ramficiations, looms large in his green eyes, which widen in the silence as he tries to think of something to say to his mother, to get this back on track.
"You know why I left," he says quietly, head bowed. "Because... because it felt heartless and empty, to me. I found something that suited my world view better. It doesn't make what you tried..." He pauses, then makes a faint noise, almost a growl, in the back of his throat. This is all going wrong. His head snaps up and, for the first time in this conversation, the emotional intensity that Frei typically shows -- and hasn't shown to anyone, for many days, with one notable exception -- comes forth, lighting up his eyes, animating his features. "I'm not allowed to change my mind?! I'm not allowed to admit a mistake?! You... chi is a *philosophy* for me, Mom. It's a way of thinking, not just... pretty lights! I came here because I wanted you to help me find a new way of thinking about fighting."
Pausing, he stops, then turns his head and clenches a fist. "If you want to turn your back on me, I don't blame you. I only seem to show up when I need something. But it's something only you can give me."
"Was it?" Isis asks back, her voice having lost none of its intensity, the statement more of a biting remark than a sincere question. Just a simile? The woman doesn't seem to think so, able to guess where this derailed conversation is going; what it is Frei had on his mind in coming here. He continues to try to elaborate, but his mother, feeling cornered and stubborn by the perceived slight, is slow to forgive. Slow to make this any easier for him as Frei tries to work his way through the minefield of issues, emotions, and historical baggage that exist between the two. While the white flag of truce might have been waved across the gulf between them the last time, it is evident that there is still a ways go to. Reconciliation for so many years apart comes slow and is not without its suffering along the way.
He speaks of why he left - that the art as being taught to him was cold, ruthless; failing to resonate with the youth who's heart was elsewhere at the time. He had to find something that fit his perspective better. He needed that freedom to search. It may feel as if he is getting no where now. As if the woman is pulling away without taking a step.
The burst of emotion is met with a slight, brief widening of the eyes before his mother's expression returns to the same as before. "Do not take that tone with me," she demands imperiously swiftly as he emphasizes how important chi is to him - it isn't just for show. It is... at least, /was/ everything to him. He speaks of what help he hoped to find but she doesn't respond at first; waiting until he finishes speaking.
"Frei." her tone is more level now, as if the storm of temper from moment's prior had just as easily subsided into a calm reprieve. "I am not the one that turned their back before. Nor am I doing so now even as you show up seemingly willing to settle for the art that I would have gladly made yours years before." The emphasis is on the word 'settle'. If this was a game of Minesweeper, the word 'settle' would be surrounded by a complete square of '1's. Exercise caution.
Then an explosion is imminent. Frei... is on the offensive.
He loves his mother. He truly does. But there is something in him now, some... unfulfilled need, some deep and true fury, at so much that he has lost. She doesn't mean to do it, and logically Frei knows she's hurting too. But as the person who feels as if he's made the first step toward reconciliation -- as the person who, even if driven by need -- started it all, there's a deep-seated desire to be met halfway. She calls it 'turning his back', but that's not how it was. That's how she sees it, and even Frei is forced to admit that there was an... abandonment, in its own way. A clean break. But sometimes that's what's needed.
"I'll take whatever tone I like!" he fires back hotly, drawing himself up. He's not that tall, but then, neither is his mother. And while he looks like his father in almost all respects, Dana Renard had none of this temper; the sudden burst of fury is all Isis, passed down to her eldest. It's not an emotion Frei is used to feeling, but it's one that he's come to respect for its uses, rare though he feels they may be. To back down now -- to bow and scrape -- is to throw everything away. He wants to reconcile with this woman, he wants to forge a better relationship, but he won't do it at the cost of his self-respect. "I'm nearly thirty, Mom," he adds after a moment, taking a deep breath and calming himself, much as Isis herself just did.
There's a pause, likely a tense one, before he continues, putting his fingers to his temples and making no show of hiding the struggle it takes to get the words out of his mouth, to find even the right tone and phrasing to make it understandable. "You're so... caught up in that," he says at last, looking straight into his mother's eyes. "I know I made a clean... well, cut," he finishes, ALMOST smiling, as if he wants to but knows he really doesn't feel like doing it. "Because I had to. I don't regret my decisions in the least, though. You have your way, and I have mine. Thren and Kataki have theirs. Dad had his, too... we all have to be our own person, for good or for ill."
The last few words come out in a rapid jumble, pacing disjointed, as if he's thinking them up on the spot... probably because he *is*. At last, though, his tone becomes more even and his customary softness returns to his features, as he finally finds his footing, and what he wants to say. "You call it 'settling', but I didn't come here to learn the sword again. You know? I came because..." He shuts his eyes. The truth... it all comes back to the truth. Can she take it? Will it even make sense? Forging ahead, Frei realizes it doesn't matter. He can tell the story; if she doesn't believe, then it's not meant to be. He can go elsewhere.
But if he doesn't tell her, will she ever understand? For a moment, he remembers something he said to Kataki, about his psychic powers... and the difference between Kataki and someone like Shurui. The latter found a way to reach out to people. To empathize, to take something of others into the self. To adapt. Tradition is fine, but if you can't adapt... there's only one way to go from there.
"Twenty-seven," he says, when his mouth finally works again. "There were 27 clones of me. I don't know who made them. I'm not even sure I care. They're all dead, mostly because they wanted to die and they asked me to kill them." His green eyes bore into his mother's face. He clicks the '1'. "Do you know what that's like? To kill *yourself*? Then to watch one of your closest friends sacrifice himself so you can live? And to realize some of it, maybe ALL of it, could have been prevented if you'd just had the right power? The right course of action?"
Shaking his head, he continues after a short pause, as much for his own sake -- keeping himself from following a dangerous mental road -- as for her's to catch up. "I've had what power I knew to wield stripped from me. I'm not sure it will EVER come back. I came to you because change -- POSITIVE change -- means accepting when you're wrong, and taking in what you can of how other people think and feel. I'm not 'settling'. I came here *because* we're different. Not better than one another. But different... maybe complementary. I don't know."
She purses her lips as he snaps back that he'll raise his voice if he feels like it, folling with the fact that he is almost thirty years old - too old to be kowtowing to the matriarch of the family, perhaps. At least that seems to be the implication. Where did he pick up such ideas? Did the Americans get their hands on him? One of the Western colleges put the idea in his head that after a certain sum of years, he can shout back at his mother? Japanese tradition would have nothing of the sort, and it is against a lifespan steeped in those customs that Frei battles now.
Isis visibly scowls at that, bristling at the rebellion in her once fiery-haired son. "And what, pray tell my son, is the exact age upon which you earned the right to raise your voice to me?" Her words have lost their volume, the woman speaking once again in the soft, almost hushed tones the proper queen of her family. He touches upon the past and her fixation with it and Isis remains quiet. He speaks of the different ways each of them had and she continues to regard him with a look that suggests he's on dangerous ground. But he pauses, pulling himself together to unload a story that he had thought not to share originally.
Then comes the tale of the clones. Twenty-seven copies of her son, manufactored as if some kind of assembly line product. His mother is silent, but her complexion pales. It is as if he speaks of a horror story. The only problem is, he seems to be the key figure. And she knows of all the issues she may have with her son, there is no doubt in her mind that he would never... /never/ lie to her face.
It disarms her on some level as he expresses the anguish at feeling insufficient to do what he felt he could have to prevent the entire travesty from playing out. Robbed of his capacity to fight in the manner he had learned, cut off from the breath of life he once communed with freely... Isis sniffs once. It has an aloof edge to it, as if she found the circumstances he's presented her with distasteful. Appealing for sympathy she has kept hidden behind the heart of ice seemingly burried in her chest may not have seemed the smartest move to make, but it just might work. At least he referenced being wrong; changing his mind when new experiences were endured.
His mother looks away at last, taking her sharp eyes from him to stare out over the horizon. From the hill-top estate, the vista is expansive and in silence she seems to take it all in. What does she say to that? How can she even respond? If she but had the power to strike down those responsible, she would go do so this very minute. But such is folly. In the end, she speaks nothing of his ordeal.
"After you left last time..." She frowns, hands clasping over each other, mostly concealed by the sleaves of her kimono. "...I realized that perhaps I was wrong about other ways of expression besides the sword. I... tried my hand at painting. I took lessons from a woman in the city to show me the way to start."
She glances to the house behind her. "My eyes were opened to the expression the artwork offered me." She shifts her focus back to Frei only to hmph. "In most affairs... it is never too late to learn." she muses. There's a catch to her voice though. A hint of there being a 'But...' "I meant what I said to Kataki, Frei. Out of all my children, you would honor my art the most were you to inherit it. However. Unlike most opportunities, this one does have have a finite expiration..."
"At twenty, I think," this indomitable woman's son says to her, in as matter-of-fact a tone as possible. He actually looks contemplative over it, as if he had to give it some thought. Somehow, getting out everything he felt like he was bottling up -- an action Frei is ill accustomed to, for certain -- has brought a lightness back into his step and his tone. Perhaps a simple catharsis really does help, regardless of what it actually *does*; whether Isis is sympathetic or not, he got it out of his system. "That's Japan's age of majority, isn't it?" Shrugging, he shakes his head. "Alright, so I'm kidding there. Should I say, 'you started it'? That's not a lot better, is it?"
He hears the story of how she began to paint, and brings his hands up, running them through his now colorless hair. The images from earlier in the conversation come back, of how his mother must look painting. But it's actually surprisingly easy to envision: the woman has the manual dexterity required to fully master a battoujutsu style... sword-drawing, in other words. The art of the immediate swift strike that ends a fight in a single attack. Perhaps influenced by a film he saw -- something with Jet Li in it, perhaps? -- he thinks of her doing calligraphy with her dominant hand, on a massive scroll of paper unrolled on the floor. A stroke here, a stroke there; confident, strong things, as if the paper were wet straw and the brush strokes were slash after slash, reducing the white space to nothing, cutting it into the shape of what she wants on the page.
He had said something about dogs playing poker.
Oh, *hell*.
Of all the things that have been bantered back and forth between these two, of all the random yelling and dredging up of the past, the tense relationship of mother to son, it is THIS realization -- of the enormity of his comments -- that actually has the power to make Frei contrite; for him to lower his eyes, fold his hands, and apologize. "And... the first thing I did was tease you for it," he says at last. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, right? "I'm sorry. It's not fair to tell you to do something and then make fun of you for doing it."
But what she says after makes him start. 'Honor the art'? Well... for starters, Frei's forced to relive the reasons she gave for why his brothers might NOT be good choices. Kataki's near-psychotic need to be the best was his; Threnody's lack of interest was the other. It's the 'nicer' of the twins his thoughts drift to temporarily: the 'balanced' one. Frei is all his father; Kataki is far too much his mother. Threnody balances the two nicely, and of course as fate would have it, he has 0 interest in becoming a consummate martial artist like his mother. Kataki wants it so bad he'd hurt others to get it. Whereas Frei... well, he's forced to answer the question he asked himself not a moment or two ago. Are you a fighter? Or a philosopher?
It's all about tradition. But tradition is a living thing... it can't live forever, unchanging. That's what being 'passed down' means.
"Listen," he says at last, giving his mother a serious look. "I'm not... sure I've got what it takes to be a swordsman. That... that THING we just did is proof. To me, the word just means 'a man with a sword' and to you, it OBVIOUSLY means so much more. But you have to understand, it's *that* I came here to learn. The 'so much more'. Because when I was little I couldn't see it, so I ran out."
A second passes, before Frei shakes his head. "But I've grown a lot since then. Do you... can you see what I'm talking about? It's not the simple act of swinging a sword. Just because you can do that doesn't make you who you are. It's everything else. That's so much more important to me. But the end result has to be something *I* construct, no matter the teacher. Do you understand what I'm saying? I want to learn, but I have to do it on my own terms. You might not like the result. The result might not be a 'swordsman'."
"Nn," comes the reply to his apology. Normally such a non-committal sound yet the slight nod that accompanies it and the subtle shift in her posture seems to hint that it was accepted for what it was intended to be. Whatever sore nerve he might've struck with comments made earlier has been sufficiently assuaged to allow her to move past the incident all together.
'Listen,' he says and Isis tenses up again. There's that tone. There he is telling her what to do even though he might not realize it. She tries to dismiss it as a mannerism of his - perhaps a shade of his time wandering the world and diluting his cultured upbringing. Or maybe he was always this way and the images in her mind of his childhood have blurred too much over the years to remember for sure. This time, at least, she doesn't retaliate verbally though she would feel justified in reminding him he has no place issuing imperatives in her direction.
She stays quiet as he explains that he may not have exactly what it takes to be the swordsman she has in mind for him to become. He talks about how the outcome will have to be something he grows and develops under her guiding hand rather than her controlling him like a puppet destined to mimic her in every way.
The woman exhales softly, sounding no longer exasperated or frustrated. "Frei." she finally speaks up. "If you learn that... the so much more as you call it, that's when you will become a swordsman. That is the spirit of the art you seek and it is that which truly matters. If you were not capable of learning it, I never would have tried so hard all those years ago." There is a heartbeat's worth of pause. "Now you listen to me." Her tone has shifted back to being uncompromising while remaining just shy of becoming demanding. "If you are to learn anything, you must open your mind to what I will try to teach you or this will only end in frustration for the both of us - it will be like the past repeated over again... and we cannot afford a repeat of that." There is a quiet urgency to her voice that tapers off along with her volume.
Isis breaths in deeply the crisp air, standing up straighter, seeming to feel a sense of relief as matters become settled in her mind. "I believe you will find that what I can teach you is not so incompatible with what you have found out there in the end. It will only be strengthed by your personal touch." A hint of a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, but only just barely. "And that is all we will speak on that. Your room will be made ready." She rests her hands over each other and turns her shoulder toward him, "I have an art lesson to get to and you will need to rest before we begin."
She pauses, lowering her head slightly before shifting her focus to glance at the young man along her shoulder, staring at him with a searching intensity as if trying to discover something in his face. Maybe it's a glimpse of his father's vigor for life. Maybe it's an acceptance of him of her. Maybe it's seeking to confirm that he understands that this will be an opportunity for the both of them to reconcile things further but to do so requires them both being open minded. Whatever it is she seeks, she says nothing before looking away, breaking eye contact, hesitating only briefly.
Now you listen and you listen good. It takes supreme effort for Frei not to smile at that, from his mother, and he realizes rather suddenly the one thing he CAN do that Kataki and Threnody probably never could: stand up to her. A trait he almost certainly inherited from his father, since it seems unlikely that Isis would bother to marry and have children with a man who wouldn't be able to match such a forceful personality. In fact, as that thought moves through his head, his mother may be surprised to find her eldest's head tilting a bit to the side in confused revelation. Standing up to her... that's not it. It's something else, something he felt as a child and which now, as an adult, he no longer really does anymore.
He's not afraid of her.
Not of her censure, not of her displeasure, not of her retribution. And in fact, Frei considers carefully, if that fear had not dissipated over time then their reconciliation would never have happened. It's always difficult when the tension between a parent who wants to be respected and a child who demands to be treated as an equal come together. It really is like walking a minefield. You never know when the next careless comment or misspoken word is going to send someone in the wrong direction entirely. Today, if nothing else, proved that.
In the end, Frei thinks it was worth it.
"Don't worry," he says to his mother, trying his best to sound solemn. "I'm not the confused 19 year old I was when I left. I found myself, and what most people don't realize is that you can't open your mind to others until you know who YOU are." He pauses, thinking back to his training... which is to say, his nearly 4 years wandering China before he found the man he called 'master'. Temples, shrines, monasteries. Places of spiritual learning and philosophy. 'Enlightenment' was Frei's only skill, in his eyes. It took him so little time, comparatively, to wrap his head around abstract concepts of philosophy and turn them into something concrete; his skill was, in fact, taking the ideal and turning it into reality. This would, of course, eventually manifest itself as the ability to shape ambient chi so proficiently. It's the act of weaving one's will into an unruly universe.
"It's the only thing I've ever been good at."
After that, Isis makes the definitive exit; even if he'd had more to say, the white-haired man is loathe to stop his mother from pursuing her art lesson, if only because to do otherwise would be hypocrisy of the highest order. Instead, he watches her go, then sits back down on the stone he rested on while waiting for her to show up.
What is it going to mean, going back to something he abandoned for so long? The future is uncertain; he and his mother may stay on good terms, or the past may rehash itself all over again, separating mother and son for another seven years...
No.
He doesn't even turn to notice the servant who shows up to take his bags; instead he closes his eyes and turns them toward the sky, feeling the cool rock under his fingertips and the breeze on his face. "I got it," he says to her. "I just want to sit for a while."
Surprised, but obeying, she departs, leaving Frei to look up at the sky and consider the future.
Log created on 22:21:24 06/22/2009 by Frei, and last modified on 04:12:20 07/04/2009.