Work Text:
Kiyoka watched, helpless, as the glass slipped from Miyo’s fingers, tumbled through the air, sent prisms of lights spinning over the walls, and smashed into a thousand pieces on the kitchen floor.
Afterwards there was silence. He barely dared move. Miyo crouched down next to the shattered glass and did not raise her head.
What should he do, what should he say? The glasses were a pre-wedding present, a western luxury in a land of wood and clay. Kiyoka had caught Miyo admiring one, turning it over in a sunbeam. She hadn’t known he was in the room. He’d chuckled to see the delight on her face and the noise startled her. She’d fumbled and now the glass was broken.
For all her self-hatred, for all her belief in her own uselessness, for all her apologising, Miyo rarely made actual mistakes. She carried herself with careful grace and didn’t make a single move without giving it serious thought beforehand. Yes, Miyo’s confidence was growing, but still. Miyo had once apologised to him in a full dogeza for making him a perfectly nice breakfast. Miyo had apologised for being kidnapped.
“It was my fault”, Kiyoka blurted out at the exact moment Yurie came running into the room.
“Miyo-sama! What happened?” She quickly took in the scene. “Are you okay? Don’t touch it. Yurie will clean it up.”
“I will clean it up,” said Kiyoka. “It’s dangerous”.
“No, it was Yurie’s fault for not being here to help Miyo-sama with the dishes. Yurie will clean it up”.
“No, it was my fault for startling her and I will be the one to take the risk and clean it up.”
“Bocchan!” Yurie started but was cut off when Miyo laughed, suddenly, and finally raised her head. There were tears in her eyes but she was smiling.
“I will clean the glass up,” she said, “because the mistake was mine alone. Do not worry. I will be careful”, and saying so, she shooed them out of the kitchen and shut the door firmly behind them.
Kiyoka and Yurie were still hovering in the hallway when Miyo emerged holding a tightly-wrapped paper package.
“I’m not sure what to do,” she said. “I cannot burn this”. Burning was how they disposed of most of their rubbish. “Perhaps I should bury it.”
“That sounds safest”, said Kiyoka, and he took the package from her hands. “I will do it. Yurie needs you.”
One of the many things he appreciated about Yurie was that she could take a hint.
“Yes, please, Miyo-sama. Can you help with the pickles? These days Yurie finds it hard to lift the pickling stone.”
Yurie kept Miyo bustling and busy for the rest of the day and by the time she had left and Miyo and Kiyoka were eating their evening meal Miyo seemed like her usual self again. Kiyoka finally let himself relax. Miyo was becoming stronger. She would be fine.
He was wrong about that. On the way back from the bathroom around midnight he was passing Miyo’s room when he heard a muffled sob.
His first instinct was to freeze, heart thumping, and check for traces of magic use. But no, this wasn’t Miyo’s power. He had to take a moment to collect himself. For a second he’d been back in that terrible time. Miyo trapped in nightmares. Being powerless to help her. The Usuba taking her away. The shut gates. The distance. The waiting.
He shook himself out of it. If it wasn’t Miyo’s power then that meant it was just Miyo, crying alone in the dark. He knew she didn’t want him to hear, but how could he do nothing? He tiptoed back to his room, retrieved something, and then went and knocked on her door.
There was a long moment of silence. Miyo opened the door the barest crack.
“Have I disturbed you, danna-sama? I’m sorry”.
“I wasn’t disturbed but…” Kiyoka knew this was a sensitive subject. He needed tact here. He wished he could see her face but all he could see through the crack in the door was shadows. “You’re crying,” he blurted, instead.
There was a long pause, then a muffled sob. Kiyoka could no longer stand it. He pushed the door open and took her in his arms.
She only let him hold her for a moment and then she stepped backwards out of his grip. His surprise must have shown on his face. “Thank you for comforting me,” she said, rubbing at her eyes. “But I…I’ve betrayed you. I feel so ashamed”.
“Betrayed me? How? By breaking a glass?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s worse than that”. She gritted her teeth, steeling herself to say something. “I know how kind you are, how kind you and Yurie-san have always been to me, and I can hear you both in my mind. You’re telling me it’s just a glass. You’re telling me that you only care that I wasn’t hurt. But…Mother…Kaya…they are so much louder”. More tears ran down her cheeks. “I want to trust Danna-sama more than anyone but I am still listening to voices from the past. I’m sorry.”
“Thank goodness,” slipped out before Kiyoka realised what he was saying. Even Miyo knew that was a strange thing to say, and it startled her so that she stopped crying. “I worried that, if I had said anything at all that lodged in your heart, it would be words like ‘it would have been better if you had never studied’, or ‘how can you expect me to eat that? It may be poisoned’. Cruel words that I have always regretted saying”.
Miyo shook her head. “Danna-sama has always been fair with me”.
Kiyoka wanted to argue with this but it wasn’t the moment. “Anyway, I’m relieved to hear that you already know how I feel. The part of me that is inside of you, it doesn’t matter that it isn’t the loudest voice. It matters that it’s the one you want to listen to”.
Miyo’s face changed as she took that in, and then she caught him off guard with a cautious smile.
“Danna-sama…thank you”.
She seemed okay now, genuinely okay this time. Kiyoka realised he was in her room, well after the hours of darkness, and they were not yet married. Somewhat embarrassed he said goodnight and hastily turned to leave which dislodged the thing in his pocket. He winced when he heard it thump on the floor. Miyo bent to pick it up before he could stop her. She turned the charred black lump over and over in her hands, her brow furrowed.
“What..?”
“It’s the glass. I tried melting it back together. With my power. I thought, if I could make it into something new, you wouldn’t be so upset.” She looked up at him, her mouth a little ‘o’ of surprise. “But, as you can see, all I was able to achieve was that ugly black lump.” He sighed. “I wasn’t sure why you were crying. If it was because of the glass, I wanted to show you this. So I could tell you, everybody makes mistakes”.
“You made this for me?” She ran her thumbs over it.
“No. Well. That is. Yes. But I wish I hadn’t”. If he had made her something, he would’ve wanted to make her something beautiful.
“May I keep it?” she asked, holding it away from him as if worried he’d grab it back. What else could he do? He nodded, she smiled, and they said goodnight.
A few days later, when passing Miyo’s room, Kiyoka glanced inside and saw the black lump of glass. Miyo was using it as a paper weight. He felt bad that she was stuck with the ugly thing and promised himself he’d buy her a beautiful paperweight the next time they were in town. And then he noticed that she’d cleaned it up. Perhaps she’d polished it. Parts of it even shone.
He'd buy her something different. He walked away smiling.
When he had the idea to make the thing he had thought Miyo was the glass. The broken thing becoming whole. A foolish impulse followed by an arrogant thought. Now he realised he might be the glass. Miyo took his awkward words and his clumsy actions and she made them shine. ‘You’re always so kind, danna-sama’, she’d say.
She was a voice in his mind, too. The one he wanted to listen to.