Credit Hikaru's speech to Rika Takahashi and the red hearts to Yin Lai, 
onegai! ^_-


Between Friends 2
Part 6
by Kristin Huntsman


        Ascot knocked hesitantly on Umi's door.  Though engaged to be 
handfasted and "married" both, he had yet to lose his innate fear that she 
might not wish to see him.  After all, he had been a horrible brat the 
first time they had met, and first impressions counted.
        "Yes?" Umi said, opening the door to her suite with a smile on her 
face.  "Oh, Ascot!  I was just thinking about you!"
        "I, um, I was wondering if you might like to go on a picnic with 
me," Ascot said shyly.  "I got a basket together from the kitchens, with 
some of the berlinetta juice you liked so much last time... but you don't 
have to come if you don't want to!"  He was positive his face was the same 
color as the red berlinetta juice he had mentioned as he finished in a rush.
        "Why Ascot," Umi said, her very beautiful blue eyes sincere and 
calming, "I'd love to come on a picnic with you."  She smiled at him as she 
stepped out of her rooms and closed the door behind herself.  She took his 
hand and asked, "So where were you going to take me?"
        Ascot halfway thought he might die of the happiness.

        The injury to Eagle's arm hurt a little, but Satoru's skills in 
bandaging wounds were equal to any doctor's, and Eagle knew it would heal 
soon enough.
        "So let me get this straight," Kakeru asked, "you're from another 
world, where Hikaru is the 'pillar that supports all of Cephiro,' and you," 
he added, turning to Eagle, "are from another world in that same dimension 
and tried to become the pillar of Cephiro as well, but didn't, and now 
you're *both* marrying my sister?!"
        "Yes," Lantis said, succinct as ever.
        "Yes, that's about right," Eagle added with a nod, amused at the 
affinity Lantis had apparently found with the strong, slightly bitter tea 
that Hikaru's mother had served to them all.  Eagle himself thought sweet 
things tasted better, but liked the tea nonetheless.  It was different.
        "And Umi-chan and Fuu-chan are 'Magic Knights' in this world, the 
same as Hikaru-chan was before she became the 'pillar,' right?" Masaru 
asked, still seeming a little wilted from Hikaru's blistering tirade.  
Lantis had taken care to inform Eagle of a few of the contents of her 
impassioned speech, and it had been so very typically, adorably Hikaru.  It 
had affected her brothers greatly.  "And they're both also marrying people 
from that world, and are going to live there like our cute Hikaru-chan is 
going to?"
        "Yes," Lantis replied again, sipping at his tea.
        Eagle smiled.
        "And Dad's coming home to all of this.  Great, that'll be fun," 
Kakeru complained.  "Well, at least he'll be here for the wedding."

        Hikaru said nothing, sitting quietly off to one side with her 
mother as her brothers and fiances got to know one another, her speech 
still running through her head: "Masaru-niisama!  How could you?!  Eagle 
and Lantis are just as important... no, *more* important than my brothers 
to me!  Why do the people that mean so much to me have to fight each 
other!?  I don't want to lose any of the people that I care about 
again...."  She held in her hands now the mirror-pendant Lantis had given 
her a while back, playing the light off of it and onto the walls as she 
tried to think of a proper way to respond to her mother's question.
        Eagle had never given her such a token, she now realized, nothing 
that she had whispered secret hopes and dreams to before falling asleep 
under the covers at night.  She didn't love him any less for not having 
exchanged courtship tokens (if the mirror could truly be called a 
"courtship token") with her, but she wondered why.
        Maybe it was an Autozamian thing, they didn't do that there or 
something.
        "I never mentioned it before because I was afraid Masaru-niisama 
and Kakeru-niisama would react badly if they found out," she started, "and 
I was afraid they'd make me promise I couldn't go to Cephiro anymore, and I 
*can't* not go!  And, and...."
        "And it was your special secret, wasn't it?" her mother asked, 
voice quiet.  "Something you shared only with Umi-san and Fuu-san and your 
friends in Cephiro, right?  You didn't want to lose that bit of privacy, 
did you, Hikaru-san?  After all, you have had so little here... Masaru and 
Kakeru still mark the anniversary of your first period on their calendars 
with little red hearts, you know."
        Hikaru blushed crimson at that.  It was true that her brothers had 
seldom afforded her much privacy, and something like red sheets couldn't 
just have been hidden from them.  But at least Okaasama and Satoru-niisama 
had never pried into her life, and had attempted (though without a whole 
lot of success, Hikaru thought) to keep her closest two brothers from doing 
the same.
        "Okaasan," Satoru's voice interrupted them.
        "Yes, Satoru-san?"
        "Given that Masaru and Kakeru seem to have accepted their future 
brother-in-laws fairly well by now, they will inevitably want to toast to 
the marriage over dinner."
        "With sake," their mother sighed, and Hikaru and Satoru very softly 
echoed the sentiment.  Masaru and Kakeru became somewhat... rowdy... when 
they drank sake, which was why they normally stayed well away from it.  But 
when the two of them thought the excuse warranted it, it took very little 
to make them lose their inhibitions.
        "Hikaru, I was wondering what kinds of foods your fiances like or 
dislike?" Satoru questioned, as he was the one who usually prepared 
dinner.  "Earth food wouldn't be too familiar to them, I'd think."
        Hikaru thought a moment.  "Umm... Eagle likes sweet things.  Lantis 
doesn't really, but he'll eat them.  And Eagle has kind of a problem eating 
meat.  You see, where he comes from they replicate it, so nothing has to be 
killed.  But he's getting past that, I think, since he's been living on 
Cephiro for a while now."
        Satoru smiled.  "Anything else?"
        Hikaru thought, then shook her head.  "Nope, that's it."
        Hikaru's mother smiled as her hand brushed Hikaru's cheek.  "One 
sweet and one savory.  You appear to have the best of both things in your 
future husbands, Hikaru-san.  Satoru-san and I want you to know that we are 
both very proud of you."
        Hikaru blushed red at the compliment and looked down at Lantis' 
mirror in her lap, fingers tracing endlessly around the edge of the silver 
surface.  "Thank you, Okaasama, Satoru-niisama," she whispered.

        Subaru smiled as he watched the dark-haired child play in the 
gardens.  It was a rare thing to him, smiling, a habit he had only resumed 
and then sporadically when Impreza-chan had been thrown into his life.  He 
wondered sometimes about her.  She was seven, and given the current time 
difference between Cephiro and Earth she would have been born not too very 
long after Subaru's sister had - no, best not to go there, best not to 
think that.  But still, in her uncanny resemblance to his twin and himself 
he couldn't help it, the comparisons.  She was even of the same clan that 
he supposedly was, the clan of his name.  Here instead of being "Sumeragi 
Subaru" he was "Subaru Legacy."  His first name had become his surname; 
fortunately, he, or who he supposedly was, was held in such respect that he 
was only addressed by that supposed surname.  It was good, because "Legacy" 
had never become a part of who he was; he doubted he'd ever be able to 
answer to that name.
        Acura said there was a reason that he was here, that there would 
come a time that his gifts would be needed to forestall the end of the 
worlds in this dimension as they were known.  It was the reason the Creator 
had pulled Subaru through time and reality to here, and the reason that 
Subaru had now dwelt in this reality for over a thousand years--though time 
was so strange here and to him that it might only have been five.
        He had to wonder if Impreza-chan was that reason, or part of it.  
He also had to wonder if it might not be that he had been given time to 
heal, to gain strength until the last Magic Knights had come and joined the 
time between Cephiro and Earth to a steady clock that was ticking away down 
to the Promised Day in 1999, a day Subaru had already lived through once.
        ... He had no way of knowing though and as the new sense of urgency 
wound at him, time unravelling all the healing he had managed for himself, 
he hoped it wasn't so.
        Impreza giggled, attracting Subaru's attention as she danced with 
the large silver butterfly, its foot-and-a-half wingspan throwing 
flickering shadows onto her face as she played.
        She was so like Hokuto-chan, Subaru thought with another soft smile.
        "I think her mother did a good thing in giving Impreza to you, 
Subaru," Acura said from where he was sitting in the branches above 
Subaru.  "She's good for you, and you're doing a pretty decent job of 
raising her."
        Subaru glanced up and met the blue gaze of his companion.  "Thank 
you," he murmured to the Cephironian sorceror.
        "She looks more like you every day," Acura observed.  "Are you sure 
you aren't really Legacy of the Subaru clan?"
        "She doesn't look like me, she looks like my sister," Subaru 
corrected, and listened to the silence of Acura's reply.  And Subaru 
wondered, when he and Seishirou-san had become their innermost natures, 
those dragons of pure energy, had he alone been cast into a different 
world, or was Seishirou-san somewhere wandering too?