Title: An Image of Rain
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Junichi Sato & co’s Prétear anime.
Warnings: None.
Characters & Relationships: Sasame x Takako
Summary: He’ll always find his way back to her. // 670 words
Author’s Note: Enjoy!
An Image of Rain
“I want to go home...”
Takako shivered in her thin shawl. A persistent, drizzling rain fell, casting a gauzy veil over the world, which lit up around street-lights and gleamed with wet tiles, shop windows, and parked cars. The pattering of the rain was the only sound. There was a distinct beauty to the world in the dark of a rainy night, but it was all but lost on her.
There was something missing.
She was stranded in a city she was unfamiliar with, utterly lost, and without her Knight.
Earlier that evening, she and Sasame had attended a concert by one of the world’s most esteemed orchestras, a once in a lifetime experience they’d gladly paid the extravagantly priced tickets and traveled halfway across Japan for. The orchestra had been magnificent. Takako had felt like that night, for just a while, she had been able to experience the world the way Sasame did again, filled with the sound of everything that lives and loves and is.
They’d had dinner in a high-class restaurant in town afterwards, and when the wine was done and the candles on their table began to drip onto the pristine white tablecloth (Sasame had remarked teasingly that only one who has served in the household of a wealthy family would notice that), they decided to finally head home. Sasame had told Takako to wait for him at the bar of the restaurant while he went out into the rain to arrange their transportation. When he had been gone for over a quarter of an hour, though, Takako’s concern became so great she set out to look for him.
And now she was standing here, lost and alone on a street corner while the rain chilled her bare arms and shoulders through the flimsy material of her shawl and the twists and curls she had so intricately wrought into her hair sagged out. Her Knight was nowhere to be found, and she had lost all sense of direction in the seemingly endless maze of streets.
“Sasame...” she breathed, afraid to disturb the rustling stillness. No wind blew, no creatures roamed and no cars drove. Goose bumps lining her skin, Takako raised her head, letting the cool, gentle rain caress her face as she closed her eyes. She wished for her Knight to come back, to wrap his arms around her and drive the cold away.
Suddenly a vibration passed through her, and she could for one breathtaking moment see herself - fair-skinned face upturned, lips parted slightly while thick, dark lashes fanned her cheekbones. Stray locks of ebony hair that had escaped the bun resting in the nape of her neck framed her face, and her cheeks were rosy from an evening of excited emotions and wine. Arms wrapped around herself while the ineffective shawl hung halfway down her shoulders, her sleeveless green dress, impeccably cut, accentuated the curves of her breasts, waist, back and hips, skirt flowing down to her elegantly heeled shoes. Every inch of her body was covered in a sheen of the finest drops of rain, trembling, flowing and alive, their living beauty outshining even the pearls around her neck. It was like she was glowing.
“Takako...”
Then her eyes shot open, a startling flash of emerald, and she spun around to find Sasame. Her white Knight with his hair of glistening silver and deep violet gaze, looking made for the moment in his pearly grey tux. Takako let out the breath she had been holding.
He made the beauty of the night’s rain complete.
She asked him where he’d gone as he came towards her, but the answer hardly registered because as he spoke, his arms encircled her and drew her close to him. He whispered something and she whispered back, and then there was only the feeling of his lips on hers, of his arms wrapped around her, and of her hands on his skin.
When they broke away she caressed his cheek, and he smiled as he said: “Let’s go home.”
PSAN: Comments on older fics will always remain welcome. :)