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THE LONELIEST HOURS
It's him and her once more. 39 floors above the busy knots of Roppongi, they find themselves yet again left alone with each other. He'd been cold since his arrival and hadn't said a thing yet. But she no longer finds a threat in his silences.
Watching herself through the monitor above the junior suite's little secretary, she is reminded of how much she dislikes that pale, toned-down version of herself that she knows only from screens and glossy LWC magazine pages. She doesn't want to look like that.
He thinks she's radiant — both on and off screen. But he won't say it, as it would defuse his anger.
"It is not exactly a secret that your ex-husband is eccentric in many ways. He's well known for his willingness to take what he wants."
On-screen-Isis smiles — not a friendly gesture, no, rather a condescending resignation; well aware that no matter how much she explains, no one will ever really get it because no one ever got quite as close as she did. But here, in the real world, she can't bring herself to smile, derisive in nature or otherwise.
"He is determined to put a lot of work into achieving his goals. Using his status and name alone, however, isn't really his taste. Neither are matters of fleeting pleasure."
"It still stands to reason that a man as prideful as Seto Kaiba might find it rather unacceptable to be turned down. By a dependant, no less. As a man used to getting what he wants—"
He's used to accusations like these, yes. He has heard them so many times he wonders whether there may be truth in them. It sounds a lot like a younger, more ruthless version of himself which he still remembers quite well. And unlike Isis — in every version — he is not obsessed with seeing only the best in himself.
"He never just got what he wanted. His success was by no means effortless; if anything, he is used to the hard work and the sacrifices it takes to get what he wants. Many tend to overlook that step so easily."
"So, you are saying in the four years you were married to him, he never displayed behavior that could be interpreted as aggressive, forceful?"
"Of course, he did. As did I. As, I am sure, do you within your personal relationships."
"You know what I am asking."
She turns away and sighs. She doesn't want to see it again, the shift in her posture where she goes from anger to sadness. Doesn't want to hear the tonal transition of her voice as she has to swallow the same old bunch of regrets.
"Would you describe your current relationship with him as cordial?"
"No."
He watches Isis' face turn into a mask he knows very well. A face she reserves for the millions of people watching her, millions of people who don't know a thing and never will.
"What exactly was the reason you didn't see a future in your relationship?"
She no longer follows the story; she knows what will happen next. TV-Isis will lean forward, reach for a glass of water and take a sip she doesn't need just to get a glance at her personal assistant standing to the right of the studio audienc, quite unhappy with how her host slides off script.
"It is a common misconception of people in your field that it was me who ended the relationship."
His attention shifts to Isis right here, four feet away from him, shoulder turned his way to block any potential for connectedness.
He has seen the recording a dozen times, and he knows famous variety host Teppei Ueda takes a break and leans back and rethinks because, yes, with this, she managed to surprise him, which is no surprise to Seto.
"Huh. Well, I am sorry to hear that. That sparks the question—"
Seto can almost hear him taking a leap.
"Let's stay on track, shall we? You want to know whether he did what this woman claimed. And I am telling you, there is no way. It is, however, very much like him to use his money and settle things behind closed doors and not care so much about the damage his public persona could take from that."
"Buying himself out of this matter didn't really—"
He switches it off. Myriads of colored pixels flash into a single white line before leaving the screen pitch black, extending the room into a polished, dark reflection.
She casts her eyes to avoid seeing his crossed arms and foot bobbing aggressively through the reflective surface.
"You shouldn't have gotten involved."
"I couldn't take it anymore."
"I deal with this my own way. On my own."
"No surprise there," she snaps back. "As per usual, you assume to be the only party concerned. How is Mokuba doing, by the way?"
"Isis," he furrows his brows a little deeper still and thus distinguishes his played-up annoyance from actual annoyance masking honest concern. "Unless you are being harassed over this matter, this is no longer your business. If you are, I'll see to a solution."
"No longer my business," she scoffs quietly. "As if anything 'Seto Kaiba' has ever been my business."
She's getting under his skin. But she doesn't care to stop just there.
"Don't give me that. I made it all your business."
He can see the foreshadow of a wayward conversation. But there's still room to change the trajectory. He pulls out the leather etui and fishes for a cigarette to calm his hands with motoric engagement.
"It was all your business, Isis, until you wanted it to no longer be mine ." He says it calmly and goes for the lighter in his chest pocket as he observes her chewing on the cheap accusation, an excuse she has heard way too many times, regardless of its being entirely unrelated to his pursuit of distance.
At the click of the lighter, she snatches the cigarette from his lips. The sudden proximity prompts reflexes in him. Every goddamn time. Luckily, both his hands are occupied, one chasing the cigarette, one holding the lighter, or else he might have accidentally put them around her waist.
"This is a non-smoking room."
She puts the cigarette out on the window sill. She can't look at him properly because today, it hurts more than ever. They haven't even been in the same room for an hour, but she knows where this is going. As if all their conversations are strung to the same handle, played by the same fidgety puppeteer.
In an attempt to detangle, she reconciles: "I didn't come here to fight." She rubs her forehead and hopes he will play along, even though she is well aware that she crossed his borders first this time. Her head pounds. Was it all just an excuse again to see him?
But no, she really is hurt by the rumors spread about him. Not because it questions her value as the woman she was in his life, but everything she knows to be true about him.
"No." He steps back, scanning the rustic interior for other distractions. But already, as if she has lived here for years and not hours, this space is entirely occupied. Even the blank, brought surfaces draw his attention to her details until all he sees is her: In the color pallet, in the shadow on the wall, in the coat hanging like a tired witness across a too-cozy armrest, and the unframed oil painting of a faceless female shape above the fireplace. "No." He puts away the etui and starts pacing over towards the sofa. "You came to fix me. Again. As you do. Baffles me that you haven't found another lost cause to take care of."
It's driving him crazy: The spite in his voice that leaves his tongue leaden and sour. And the way she bites her lip to cope with the effect of what he said. There's no truth in it, just hurtful words grabbed from thin air and meant to poke deep and scratch the scars she's hiding. She is one of the very few who never tried to fix him. Maybe that's why it hurts so much to accuse her like that.
He prowls back toward the table and around it just so that he doesn't have to look at her. Putting up fences to not jump at her throat.
She stands like a statue, unmoved, arms folded into an unbreachable defense before her chest. But deep down, she is shaking. She hates him for what he said; she hates even more still that he hates himself for it, too, so much that he's unable to stand still around his own words.
"I don't need to do this again, Seto."
She strokes her hair back and holds it in a straight black ponytail before letting it fall onto her shoulders.
He watches her neckline flash before his eyes and remembers the texture of that hair, pushing it slowly across her skin to close a dress or a necklace. She's not trying to appeal, he knows that, but it can't be helped. The evening sky smudges mulberry spots into her skin, demoralizing the impact of her cold, rigid stance. Every angle of her body calls out to him.
"It's like the Sunset acquisition all over again, but worse. I can't stand by and watch your tragedies happen. Are you asking me to turn a blind eye while the mob comes for you in this ridiculous witch hunt?" It's nothing like the Sunset project. The only thing that relates is the evidence of sleepless nights in the lines on his face and the tabloid magazines chasing him down into the trenches.
"You're dramatic, per usual. Stop blowing things out of proportion." If it's not the Sunset project, it's the Bay expansion. If it's not that, it's the Valley towers. Every project he touched was a hazard in her eyes, every new venture just potential for disaster. Or that's how he learned to view her pursuit of a healthy balance in his life. He knows that it's a warped vision of what happened.
She grabs his arm and stills his big cat pacing, but he pulls himself free before turning into a pet in her hold and hisses back: "How long are you planning to hold my efforts against me?"
Her big brown eyes catch his tired blue gaze, and he knows she knows the situation is getting out of hand.
"I work too much. I am never around. I am too ambitious or greedy." He scoffs and steps away from her, brushing his fingers through his hair. "You can't pick and choose at a whim whether my 'working hard' is a virtue or a sin, Isis. I also tried everything to make this family happen, and you know it." Whenever she brings up the work that pushed him to his limits, he knows what she is really saying is that he wasn't there. And every time, the accusation hits too close to home to be ignored.
"I suppose that's why it stopped once family wasn't an opt—"
"No," he barks back and points at her; a long, thin finger loaded with guilt more than blame. "Don't start this now."
Every time they come together, it seems their past is still a pile of shards before them, and it's impossible to kick one away without unearthing the next, each one sharper than the other, and so they hop around between those scattered miserable moments, trying not to fall back right into it where they would only cut themselves bloody.
If she could, she would undo the implication because she knows she went too far but just turns away, so she doesn't have to see it in the furrows of his brows and the shadows under his eyes.
She kneels down to get bottled water from the fridge and slams the door shut a bit too hard to mimic control. "Your brother suffers from this situation, too, so is his family, and so is your _ business, by the way."
He notes that she still bites her tongue over curse words and still omits herself from the list, even though that's the point she really wants to make.
He knows why she crouched before the fridge instead of bending down. He knows why she takes small sips, watching for the bottle not to linger on her lips too long, and knows why all her movements are abrupt and graceless. There is no one here but him, and she does not want to offer even an ounce of what she knows could catch the eye of not the man she's fighting but the one she loves.
"You are always trying to fight someone else's battle, Isis. Don't you have other projects to distract yourself with?"
She finds backing against the kitchen counter; he stays right where he is, in the middle of the room, with nothing to hold on to because he doesn't need anything besides the raise in his voice and the hurtful accusations in his words.
"It's the same story every time, Seto. Have you looked in a mirror recently? You lost 20 pounds in the past 6 weeks; I can tell just from the paparazzi shots. You look older than you are by a decade, and you have not spoken to your brother in months."
"Every goddamn time you bring him up, like a cheap excuse. It didn't work then and won't work now."
"Sadly so."
"Stay out of this, Isis," he points at her again and leans a step forward, and if there wasn't that much space between them and all that closeness, the gesture might have been threatening. "You can't save everyone all the time."
"No. But who ever cared about everyone?" She's loud now, too. It's something he taught her. "It's never been everyone, Seto."
He sees the brooding anger in her open eyes that never try to hide anything. There's still the old disappointment, the solid ruins of their foundation in the shimmer of her iris. He turns his face toward the floor, vision covered with a pinch to the bridge of his nose, but fails to stir his memories past flashes of her tear-wetted face. He never wants to see her cry again.
She doesn't want to see him like this: Overworked, insomniac, distracted. Just like all those years ago when postmodern visions and risky business projects had once again become more thrilling, challenging, and engaging than the healing experience of falling in love.
The thought still hurts. She wonders if she will ever recover from that particular insecurity he left her with. The one she didn't know before him.
Too often, she thinks that should have been the end for them and likely would have been — if it hadn't been for the pregnancy.
"I'm sorry," he says, and although it is not the right word for what it is he experiences, and neither sounds nor feels honest, there is some truth to it. He isn't sorry per se, but it pains him to know that she came to fight a losing battle in his name. He's seen the backlash of her efforts. Even the masses that used to celebrate her as the taming force in his life now question her integrity. "I know you are trying to help, but you're just making yourself a target, and you won't change the outcome of this matter."
"If you'd just not bought yourself out of this. You know exactly what it makes you look like. You wanted this to be over rather sooner than later, I get it, but this was not the way to go about it. You may as well admit all the nonsense."
He observes her shoulders sink in. She's exhausted. Years ago, he would have known how to relieve her from that; now, he doesn't even know if she wants him to. With her face turned toward the window, he studies the soft lines left along the prominent tendon, guiding his gaze from her ear toward her chest. She's wearing a pair of simplistic gold earrings he had put in order for her 30th birthday.
"I know you very well, Seto," she says into the sky beyond the window, knowing the words are lost on him. "I know what you are doing. Trying to keep us out of this."
She still feels his fingers stroke past her ears and the skin behind her neck, holding up her hair when morning sickness struck. She remembers the nights he sat by their bed, ensuring she was as comfortable as possible. When he wasn't around her, he was passed out over books and advisories about pregnancy. How to be a better partner. How to become a good father.
She smiles over a passing thought.
"After all this time, you're still trying to keep me safe."
She remembers all the times she felt like the baby was eating her alive, all the moments she just knew she couldn't do it and how he was by her side to hold her as if there was no other place to be, and how his chest caught her tears which were tears of pain but also of fear because nothing was ever that frightening to her.
"But you don't need to do that anymore. I'm no longer your responsibility."
It hurts to hear that. As if she releases him from a duty she knows he's not up against. It reminds him of every time he was unable to take her pain. How all that money and all the advanced treatments weren't quite enough. Because while they are talking about his lawsuit, really, they are talking about a lot of things, a lot of stories that are much older.
He sits down on the untouched bed and rubs his hands across his face. How is it possible they always circle back to this? Is there nowhere else to go? But of course not. He soaks up the smell of ink and cigarettes from his palms. Every time, he thinks there is nothing left they can do to each other, and every time he finds himself surprised by how much there is still left to damage.
"You made it sound as if I left you."
Since the first time the interview aired, this has been on his mind. It's wrong. He keeps turning the memory over, but no matter what, it is wrong. He wouldn't have.
He is as bad as he is good, she thinks. "That is what bothers you?"
"It's not true."
"It may well have been."
She finally regards him again, and he's right back where she left him: broken and defenseless and all kinds of helpless but most of all distant and scared of the truth. It sparks anger in her more than anything and laces her voice with spite and edge.
"You left me alone, and that forced me to leave. It's the same thing."
"You can't sa—"
"Don't you dare play offended," she barks back. "I could have died. And the gods only know if you would have picked up your phone and found out, that's how far away you were." Her stomach roils, and every nerve pulls tight around the pain she's injecting. She can manage when the memories lie quiet, but speaking of it is a different pill to swallow. Which is exactly why he never allows her to do so. After all this time, he is still so scared of having this conversation. Meanwhile, for her, there is just no other conversation to have before this one.
He jerks up, face and neck flushed. Anger, yes, of course, but even more a special kind of terror. "Don't." His fingers are balled into fists, and it does nothing to pace his heart. No lies in what she says. That's the worst of it.
She wants to be fair. She wants to acknowledge every little thing, every moment he spent by her side, every word meant to raise her up, every time he carried her to bed or held her frail hands to warm her fingers. Even still, she holds his gaze and all the rage in it because when it comes to rage, she doesn't lose.
"You can't say that."
She nods calmly, pushing her lower lip forward to chew on the idea of him dictating what she can and can't say about the way they parted.
"I did everything in my power."
Every time, his teeth clench around those words as if to hold them tight, as if they mean something special, more than just the cold hard truth:
"Well, for once, there was nothing in your power that could have been done."
Her head is spinning, and she feels sick to her stomach, feels her body going back in time, fighting an old injury that's been long closed but never quite healed. She pushes away from the counter. Her posture has changed into softness and fluid emotions. She grabs her coat and gets close enough to still be almost out of reach, looking him dead in the eyes, hers now as tired as his and as dulled.
"You fought with me to the end, and I won't forget that. It's the reason I still stand by you and always will."
Her pulse is in her throat, thudding above an empty chest. She knows she has to leave before her hands go numb and take over; they already curl their fingers into the hem of his shirt sleeve, and it's not right.
His brows pull together, but his hand is skin to skin with hers by then. She knows he will shut her down, as he always does, but she will never grow tired of trying. Because she is so tired of being strong for the both of them.
"We both lost someone that day, Seto."
She knows exactly why he ran, and she would have done the same, just that it wasn't an option for her.
"Isis, I—" He brushes up her forearm, but she pulls back, jerks his hand away, and raises hers into a shield before her face, and she is fighting back the bite behind her eyes, but it's too late. It's the feeling of his fingertips and the heptic nuance of his unequivocal, careful gentleness that she learned to assume in the brush of soft blankets or milky bath water. She doesn't want him to touch her like that because it ruins all the fruitless efforts to forget his soothing properties.
"But me? Why does it feel like I lost both of you."
She knows why he ran and keeps running.
"Why weren't you there after?"
But it doesn't help her understand. Not even a bit.
"Please, stop it."
She turns and heads toward the door, but he catches her upper arm, his fingers shaking over the touch.
"Hold on," he says but isn't quite ready because when she looks back, her eyes are glazed with tears, and now it's happening all over again. She lays her head sideways, just a slight apologetic tilt, a moment of weakness, this breaking point that she tried to avoid because she knows he can't think straight when she's crying, and it's not that she wants to, but when he touches her like that, she feels it all again: the hole left in her and the cool air where he used to be, and now it's too late, and she presses her lips together and tries so hard to fight back the burn that his hand leaves on her.
He puts his forehead against hers and releases his grip into a gentle stroke along her goosebumps-riddled shoulder. "I'm sorry—" His hands find their place on her cheeks, where they catch the first tears her lashes fail to hold. Her eyes are pressed shut tightly.
"Why weren't you there?"
"I'm sorry."
"Why weren't you there—" Her coat falls to the ground, and her arms hold him, hold on to him because now he is here, and that is all she will ever get, even though it will never matter in the same way ever again. "I was still alive, but it wasn't enough," she cries into his hands.
He feels the same old panic, the same resignation and vertigo. The urge to run away from just how much it hurts. But she's here with him now, and it's where she ought to be. His thumbs preclude their attempt to dry her face; before he knows it, he tastes the salt on her lips, a brief rebound. A second of magnetic forces.
He breathes into his words without thinking about what he can say. "That's not—"
Her lips pull him in again. Always a shock to feel that old connection. She embraces him to bury her face in the crook of his neck and press against him because she misses this body that used to be part of her. He strokes through her hair and breathes in the smell that used to remind him of her until it faded from his clothes and sheets. And he holds her as tight as he can because why weren't you there are still the hardest words to hear, and if it could make her stop asking, he would go through all of it again, just to do it differently this time, to bear the ending, too, in which he would sit and witness her grief with his hands bound and his head void of any clever solution.
Her face comes around again to find his. Closed-eyed, they let muscle memories guide their movements.
He unbuttons his shirt, but they don't stop kissing until she bends to take off her shoes, and even then, she comes straight back and reclaims him. He's tired of this fight. Of staying apart and never moving on. The clashing every time being apart is too much to endure.
She is the one who says it first — "I love you" — as he sits back down on the bed and pulls her on top. He never used to say it.
She never needed to hear it until after she got really sick, and it took him too long to learn to say it. "I love you, too," he whispers to her ear, and even though it will never not feel strange, he knows it to be true. This is just what he feels for her, and he won't ever miss another chance to tell her, even though no chance will quite count as the ones he missed. "I love you," he says again, and the tickling of his breath under her chin makes her chuckle, and in that little laugh, chased by a teary hiccup, his words ring so true to himself that it frightens him all over.
He kisses her cheek, high atop the bone, and it's all stains of drying tears. Her eyelashes batter against his skin. He turns her over onto her back and kisses her temple, bites the shell of her ear, and when he follows her neckline, the earring tangles against his forehead.
When his fingers slide between hers, she curls them in, a reflex almost, the need to hold him tight, to feel every touch as solid as possible, even if it hurts a little, because no chance it'll hurt as much as an empty palm—
He responds accordingly. Knows that she seeks to feel him. No intent of letting her go, not even for a second. Using his body weight, he traps her in the moment, in the illusion that there is no walking out of this again. His right hand wanders until it reaches the curve of her hip, where the dress got caught as she had tangled her legs around him.
She holds him close, with her legs, with her arms around his neck, with her biting his lip. It's not that she thinks he will run away now; he never runs from sex, only from the conversations. It's just the need for contact. It's been months. A particularly long stretch of disappointed loneliness after they'd last seen each other. "Stay here," he says, referring to a future.
She pushes him over, sits up, and takes off her dress first, then her underwear, and before she is even done, her lace Brazilian still caught on her right ankle; before he can stare at the scar, before she can think about it, he pulls her back, impatient, because every moment of distance gives room for doubts and as she leans over him, her heavy, messy hair fall into his face. He remembers every time he slept with her, even though they are countless, just by this distinct sensation native to all their intimate contacts.
They don't take the time to dim lights or pull curtains. It doesn't matter. It's not about the excitement of discovering each other; it's about finding something they keep losing, as if it isn't the most important thing they retain.
Their intimacy isn't the same as it used to be. There is the unreasonable guilt she feels toward him for not being a mother, which makes her rough and restless. And there is the impression of her fragility that makes his grip too tender and his movements too careful. When his lips wander below her breasts, she will pull him back — as if he's no longer allowed to see all she considers damaged now.
It can't be helped. These acts of closeness are no longer about providing pleasure to a lover. They are about taking comfort from the only person who would understand why. It is the only kind of intimate affair they crave and can accept. That's why he doesn't need to tell her that nothing ever happened with the intern or any other woman. And it's why she doesn't bother asking.
She watches flocks of birds through the thin laces before the window.
Her leg ties him down still, and her arm holds his chest; her sadness peaks when her head lies beneath his chin, listening to his long, calm breaths and a beating heart she misses too much. Fatigue keeps her still against the rising panic as she watches dawn creep into the firmament above the city. Her fingers play with his, counting his digits one by one to memorize how they feel because morning is coming.
"I always knew it," she says, so quietly that at first, she wonders if she even said it out loud at all, but his muscles react and tighten under her weight. In these moments of dawn, the sky takes a color akin to that of his eyes, and it stirs a melancholy in her she can not fight. "Somehow, I always knew it wouldn't end well, but I wanted it to work. I really did…."
"I know that." His left hand fingers comb through her hair, slowly, gently, untangling the sleepless night.
"I kept thinking that when I met you, one of the first things you taught me was that we can be in control. That there's no such thing as fate."
"Isis. What happened didn't happen because it wasn't meant to be."
"With you, I thought I could make it. I thought we could be fine."
He pulls her a little tighter, and she closes her eyes and inhales his scent and closely feels his body temperature and the edges and curves of his muscles, and the sensation provides something so special to her, so much more than her endlessly big sofa bed and all the soft pillows in the world ever could. And although sleep is a dangerous game, she can't escape the amenity of his closeness.
When the sun tickles her nose and she opens her eyes again, the emptiness beside her is no stranger to wake up to. It's the familiar space he leaves. A deep hollow like a hole in the world and her sitting at the edge. She rolls over and sits up, her body strained, her mind exhausted.
She picks up her dress. Instead of his hand, a mild November breeze strokes her back through the open window.
This is what they do. To each other. For each other. Every now and then, they cross into each other's path again, never by accident, always because one finds a way to intrude. They find each other in moments of profound discomfort, and they still the pain for a moment in time.
She doesn't spend much time getting ready, but she makes sure to look fine. She straightens her dress, combs his touch out of her hair, and covers the last shadows she can't wash off her face with a scented powder.
This is what they do. Over and over again for the past three years.
But this time, something is different. She almost misses it, but at the bedside table is a note with his remarkably aristocratic handwriting, and because she hasn't seen it in a while, it makes her smile, and she traces the signs with her nail, perceives his promise to be back within the hour, and his plea for her to wait because he wants to talk.
And for a moment, she hesitates.