I Guess You're Never Really All Alone...
Well...random anecdotes from the life of sciathan_file...
Went to Sarah's birthday...took her to Bobby McGee's...who then tried to put a giant balloon on her, but it was too big for her head...so they resorted to a foil crown and cape...and then made her ride around the restaurant on a food cart in said costume.
We also randomly decided to make ourselves Host Club characters as fitted our personalities...I was appropriately Renge. Aaron decided, because he was the twins (yes, both of them) he would commit acts of twincest with himself...prompting me to quip, "Aaron! No twincest while I am drinking!" We are geeks. This thing I know.
And to further prove my geekiness...I have finished Part 2 of "Points of Reflection" in record time. I was going to wait until I could see the subbed version of episode 17...but then I just started writing.
Has anyone else noticed that Kyouya is much more popular than Tamaki in the fanfiction community...?
Oh well, without further ado, Kyouya's look at the world of the Host Club....
Spoilers: This whole entire fic is pretty much a gigantic spoiler for the events of volume 6 of the manga.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Host Club…I just play with the characters and their world from time to time to amuse myself.
Part II - Firsts and Thirds
~sciathan_file
After the chaotic weeks leading up to the Cultural Festival, he finally found a brief respite in which to sit back and think about the events that had happened in the past few days.
Despite it all, there was simply one thing he could say…
The game had gone extremely well.
And, alone in the back of the second of the Ootori family’s Rolls Royce limousines, Kyouya could only smirk into the darkness at this thought.
For the time being, at least, his father had been appeased. He had been able to see his third son - whom no one expected to be able to vie with his two older brothers - engineer and manipulate a convoluted scheme that would be remembered in the history of Ouran High School for decades to come.
Of course, it was not Kyouya himself that would be the face of this plan within the annuls of history.
But this detail had been planned for and integrated into his original design.
His father appreciated subtlety and although the Host Club’s victory and acquisition of the festival’s Central Salon carried the face of Tamaki Suoh, his father, and indeed anyone who had any sort of knowledge concerning the third Ootori son, knew that the triumph carried the unmistakable signature of the club’s Shadow King.
This strategic move carried the added bonus of pleasing the powerful Yuzuru Suoh, as well. The Suoh family had, up until now, been apart from any dealings with his own family…and his father had mentioned on many occasions that the connections he forged within the Host Club might serve to be quite lucrative in the future to the Ootori Corporation.
Indeed, Kyouya mused that if he were to be judged solely on the connections that he had cultivated during the course of his interesting game, there was no doubt whom his father would choose as his successor.
He had, on more than one occasion, mentioned that the “idiotic” Suoh heir (not that Kyouya disagreed with his father’s assessment at times) was quite an acquaintance to have made.
And rare though it may be, Kyouya completely agreed with him…albeit for very different reasons.
Out of all the games that Kyouya chose to play, the familial danse macabre that he had been involved with for as long as he was conscious of the stakes was by far the most interesting.
And, the truth was that he played this, for the time being, on the smaller chessboard of the Host Club. Currently, there were only three pieces that truly interested him, because they were of the greatest strategic importance to his overall hierarchy of moves.
He, of course, always pictured himself as controlling the Queen. Although the piece did not have the glory of the King, it was by far the most powerful and strategically useful. Tamaki, in and of himself, was in many ways like his similarly ranked piece…without the help of the other pieces, he retained his importance, but was fairly useless strategically.
Ultimately, Kyouya knew that the one who retained his power over the King, also attained his ability to control the game.
Kyouya was not his father though. His control was not solely for the purpose of manipulating Tamaki for the profit he might turn or the merit such a prestigious connection gave him…Tamaki was perhaps the one person in the competitive and cutthroat society that truly came to him in the spirit of friendship and loyalty.
And indeed, Kyouya was certain that he was the only one to whom he reciprocated this sense of loyalty.
But, he was not so foolhardy as to simply discount a profit motivation.
That was something that Tamaki and only Tamaki would do.
Because, if one decided to use the chessboard of the Host Club, then it was necessary to admit that Tamaki Suoh was the glue that held the entire game together.
Because when the King was captured, the game would end.
This was something that Kyouya had known from the very beginning.
However, in his match, the Rook, a piece which only moved straight ahead in clear cut fashion, had been moving closer and closer to a strategic showdown with his own piece.
And indeed, Haruhi moved among the ranks of the Host Club, oblivious to the destruction she wrought in the comfortable and oddly complacent world of the rich boys that she had accidentally surrounded herself with.
The Rook, simple and unassuming though she may be, could cleave the board in two with one straight line.
To anyone with a discerning eye, the effects were already more than apparent.
Kyouya, due to his position as Tamaki’s best friend, had seen him act in ways that were contrary to all the carefully documented traits that he had known in all the three years they had been friends when she was present.
The changes had at first become apparent during Renge’s disastrous, although pathetically amusing, movie shoot. In the aftermath of that otaku-induced fiasco, Kyouya had witnessed the first and only time that Tamaki, normally polite and gentlemanly to a fault, had committed an act of violence.
And that episode had only heralded the long list of firsts that Kyouya would become privy to…Indeed, Tamaki prided himself on being honest and unscrupulous…yet by his own design, he was now embroiled in an all out lie concerning the nature of the gender of Ouran’s only special scholarship student.
Additionally, as anyone who knew Tamaki for more than a day of his life knew, was quite the crybaby. Surprisingly, in order to make a point, Tamaki had exhibited uncharacteristic self-control in order to show Haruhi that there were indeed people that worried about her. And although Kyouya himself had had to ultimately enforce this in a manner that she could understand without confusion, he doubted anyone had seen the Host Club’s King restrain himself from sitting in a corner for such a long duration of time.
And, finally, tonight, he had witnessed him make his first conscious mistake in front of his grandmother for Haruhi’s benefit.
To someone who knew Tamaki Suoh, this one simple gesture spoke volumes about the ways that the game might precede.
And perhaps this precedent was the most troubling of them all.
He knew what Tamaki thought of the society that he had only unwittingly become a part of by an accident of birth - and it was this same society that Kyouya himself had to constantly navigate due to an accident in birth order. However, the difference between them was that in the end, Tamaki simply did not care enough for it to go to the lengths and play the games that he was told to.
He had simply created a space where he didn’t have to obey the rules.
But now, he had a sort of temptation to find a space where escaping those rules could possibly become permanent.
Rather, he had found a person who might be able to accomplish this aim.
Because, like all of the other members of the Host Club, Tamaki had now caught a glimpse of the world beyond the ridiculous amounts of roses and gilt that assembled the world of Ouran High School.
For the first time in all of their lives, they had had a glimpse of a straightforward reality without the need to compete for an inheritance or keep up designated appearances or bow to another’s authority over one’s own innate desires. Through Haruhi, they had seen that there were forces outside of money and prestige and blood that were powerful enough to capture and knock their own pawns off of the board.
If Tamaki had given the members of the club leave to ignore the rich society that had tried to impose its standards of comportment and silly rules of succession upon them, then it was Haruhi, by simple virtue of her nature and rather…unique…perspectives, who had might cause them to be wholly unable to remain solely in the Wonderland of the Host Club.
Kyouya closed his eyes for a moment and pondered this thought, opening the after a moment to look out the window at the tall hedges that bounded off the large tracts of property within his neighborhood.
He was very much aware that they would not be able to remain in Wonderland forever.
Kyouya only managed the madness that occurred there as was fitting of his role in the story. But, the story would end. Graduation would come.
Reality would follow.
He sometimes wondered if he was the only one who definitively knew this.
But for the time being, Tamaki was the Mad Hatter that was the self-appointed and rather idiotic master of that world. In the background, Kyouya’s own Black Queen would remain on the fringes of both the world of the storybook and the world without and document and understand what happened in both. However, as a third son, he was perfectly cognizant that he was not free to leave Wonderland by himself.
Because only Alice, who the storybook land thought should be at its will, could actually move freely between the two worlds.
And it was an interesting gamble to try to discern exactly whom she would bring out of the surreal world when all was said and the perfunctory “happily ever after” was added.
For now, Kyouya would merely regard her as an aberration within his plans and hope that she never turned into more.
But Haruhi Fujioka was certainly making it more interesting than he ever thought it could be.
As the scenery outside the darkly tinted windows changed to something calmingly familiar, Kyouya sighed tiredly, thinking that his mind had run away with him…or perhaps that some of Tamaki’s nonsense was finally rubbing off on him.
Indeed, the game could only become more interesting from here on.
And, for now, he was in control of the board.
And he had no doubt that he could manipulate the rest of the pieces to prevent the Rook from driving the King into checkmate…or Alice from showing them that Wonderland was a well-crafted dream.
But, for once he was uncertain that a profit motive would win out.
…but again with the foolishness.
Kyouya decided that sleep was what he needed to cure his recent rash of nonsensical thoughts.
The red break lights of the other limousine, making its long way up the sloping driveway of the Ootori mansion only a few feet in front of his own vehicle, flashed briefly and drew his attention.
His thoughts were forcibly directed away from the absurdity of Wonderland and back to the chessboard at hand.
Who knew what his father would say to his brothers when he stepped out of the back seat. Perhaps they would both be surprised that the third son that so little was expected from had managed to accomplish so much…and, perhaps, had even exceeded the accomplishments of the favored two.
However, they would also notice that the person who their father spoke so highly of at the moment had not even been accorded the courtesy of riding with his father in the same car in his moment of victory.
At this thought Kyouya yet again smiled, although there was a slightly bitter edge to it.
Perhaps that is why he understood Tamaki’s situation so very well.
The difference between riding in the second Ootori Rolls Royce and living within Suoh Mansion #2 was only a matter of duration…not necessarily of significance.
But hopefully, in both regards, that would change.
Stepping out of the car and following at a short distance behind his father, Kyouya knew that he could only take one fact for granted.
The game could only become more interesting from here.
Fin
A/N: Here is Kyouya’s take on the events of the Cultural Festival. I really wanted to play with the dynamics of Haruhi and Tamaki, specifically how Tamaki is sort of a force of creation and how Haruhi could potentially become a divisive force if she ever is paired off with anyone. Kyouya, however, would probably be the only one to realize this…although I’m not sure how much of that original idea actually ended up in this fic. Instead, a bunny concerning the dichotomy of the Host Club’s sort of artificial world and the Haruhi’s world of reality sort of ran away with the fic…I blame the influence of Lady_Stargazer’s truly superb fic “Miles to Go Before I Sleep.” If you haven’t read it, by all means do. Anyways, recs and notes aside, thank you all for reading. If you left me some comments, I would truly love you! Wow…author’s note is egregiously long…sorry!
Went to Sarah's birthday...took her to Bobby McGee's...who then tried to put a giant balloon on her, but it was too big for her head...so they resorted to a foil crown and cape...and then made her ride around the restaurant on a food cart in said costume.
We also randomly decided to make ourselves Host Club characters as fitted our personalities...I was appropriately Renge. Aaron decided, because he was the twins (yes, both of them) he would commit acts of twincest with himself...prompting me to quip, "Aaron! No twincest while I am drinking!" We are geeks. This thing I know.
And to further prove my geekiness...I have finished Part 2 of "Points of Reflection" in record time. I was going to wait until I could see the subbed version of episode 17...but then I just started writing.
Has anyone else noticed that Kyouya is much more popular than Tamaki in the fanfiction community...?
Oh well, without further ado, Kyouya's look at the world of the Host Club....
Spoilers: This whole entire fic is pretty much a gigantic spoiler for the events of volume 6 of the manga.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Host Club…I just play with the characters and their world from time to time to amuse myself.
Part II - Firsts and Thirds
~sciathan_file
After the chaotic weeks leading up to the Cultural Festival, he finally found a brief respite in which to sit back and think about the events that had happened in the past few days.
Despite it all, there was simply one thing he could say…
The game had gone extremely well.
And, alone in the back of the second of the Ootori family’s Rolls Royce limousines, Kyouya could only smirk into the darkness at this thought.
For the time being, at least, his father had been appeased. He had been able to see his third son - whom no one expected to be able to vie with his two older brothers - engineer and manipulate a convoluted scheme that would be remembered in the history of Ouran High School for decades to come.
Of course, it was not Kyouya himself that would be the face of this plan within the annuls of history.
But this detail had been planned for and integrated into his original design.
His father appreciated subtlety and although the Host Club’s victory and acquisition of the festival’s Central Salon carried the face of Tamaki Suoh, his father, and indeed anyone who had any sort of knowledge concerning the third Ootori son, knew that the triumph carried the unmistakable signature of the club’s Shadow King.
This strategic move carried the added bonus of pleasing the powerful Yuzuru Suoh, as well. The Suoh family had, up until now, been apart from any dealings with his own family…and his father had mentioned on many occasions that the connections he forged within the Host Club might serve to be quite lucrative in the future to the Ootori Corporation.
Indeed, Kyouya mused that if he were to be judged solely on the connections that he had cultivated during the course of his interesting game, there was no doubt whom his father would choose as his successor.
He had, on more than one occasion, mentioned that the “idiotic” Suoh heir (not that Kyouya disagreed with his father’s assessment at times) was quite an acquaintance to have made.
And rare though it may be, Kyouya completely agreed with him…albeit for very different reasons.
Out of all the games that Kyouya chose to play, the familial danse macabre that he had been involved with for as long as he was conscious of the stakes was by far the most interesting.
And, the truth was that he played this, for the time being, on the smaller chessboard of the Host Club. Currently, there were only three pieces that truly interested him, because they were of the greatest strategic importance to his overall hierarchy of moves.
He, of course, always pictured himself as controlling the Queen. Although the piece did not have the glory of the King, it was by far the most powerful and strategically useful. Tamaki, in and of himself, was in many ways like his similarly ranked piece…without the help of the other pieces, he retained his importance, but was fairly useless strategically.
Ultimately, Kyouya knew that the one who retained his power over the King, also attained his ability to control the game.
Kyouya was not his father though. His control was not solely for the purpose of manipulating Tamaki for the profit he might turn or the merit such a prestigious connection gave him…Tamaki was perhaps the one person in the competitive and cutthroat society that truly came to him in the spirit of friendship and loyalty.
And indeed, Kyouya was certain that he was the only one to whom he reciprocated this sense of loyalty.
But, he was not so foolhardy as to simply discount a profit motivation.
That was something that Tamaki and only Tamaki would do.
Because, if one decided to use the chessboard of the Host Club, then it was necessary to admit that Tamaki Suoh was the glue that held the entire game together.
Because when the King was captured, the game would end.
This was something that Kyouya had known from the very beginning.
However, in his match, the Rook, a piece which only moved straight ahead in clear cut fashion, had been moving closer and closer to a strategic showdown with his own piece.
And indeed, Haruhi moved among the ranks of the Host Club, oblivious to the destruction she wrought in the comfortable and oddly complacent world of the rich boys that she had accidentally surrounded herself with.
The Rook, simple and unassuming though she may be, could cleave the board in two with one straight line.
To anyone with a discerning eye, the effects were already more than apparent.
Kyouya, due to his position as Tamaki’s best friend, had seen him act in ways that were contrary to all the carefully documented traits that he had known in all the three years they had been friends when she was present.
The changes had at first become apparent during Renge’s disastrous, although pathetically amusing, movie shoot. In the aftermath of that otaku-induced fiasco, Kyouya had witnessed the first and only time that Tamaki, normally polite and gentlemanly to a fault, had committed an act of violence.
And that episode had only heralded the long list of firsts that Kyouya would become privy to…Indeed, Tamaki prided himself on being honest and unscrupulous…yet by his own design, he was now embroiled in an all out lie concerning the nature of the gender of Ouran’s only special scholarship student.
Additionally, as anyone who knew Tamaki for more than a day of his life knew, was quite the crybaby. Surprisingly, in order to make a point, Tamaki had exhibited uncharacteristic self-control in order to show Haruhi that there were indeed people that worried about her. And although Kyouya himself had had to ultimately enforce this in a manner that she could understand without confusion, he doubted anyone had seen the Host Club’s King restrain himself from sitting in a corner for such a long duration of time.
And, finally, tonight, he had witnessed him make his first conscious mistake in front of his grandmother for Haruhi’s benefit.
To someone who knew Tamaki Suoh, this one simple gesture spoke volumes about the ways that the game might precede.
And perhaps this precedent was the most troubling of them all.
He knew what Tamaki thought of the society that he had only unwittingly become a part of by an accident of birth - and it was this same society that Kyouya himself had to constantly navigate due to an accident in birth order. However, the difference between them was that in the end, Tamaki simply did not care enough for it to go to the lengths and play the games that he was told to.
He had simply created a space where he didn’t have to obey the rules.
But now, he had a sort of temptation to find a space where escaping those rules could possibly become permanent.
Rather, he had found a person who might be able to accomplish this aim.
Because, like all of the other members of the Host Club, Tamaki had now caught a glimpse of the world beyond the ridiculous amounts of roses and gilt that assembled the world of Ouran High School.
For the first time in all of their lives, they had had a glimpse of a straightforward reality without the need to compete for an inheritance or keep up designated appearances or bow to another’s authority over one’s own innate desires. Through Haruhi, they had seen that there were forces outside of money and prestige and blood that were powerful enough to capture and knock their own pawns off of the board.
If Tamaki had given the members of the club leave to ignore the rich society that had tried to impose its standards of comportment and silly rules of succession upon them, then it was Haruhi, by simple virtue of her nature and rather…unique…perspectives, who had might cause them to be wholly unable to remain solely in the Wonderland of the Host Club.
Kyouya closed his eyes for a moment and pondered this thought, opening the after a moment to look out the window at the tall hedges that bounded off the large tracts of property within his neighborhood.
He was very much aware that they would not be able to remain in Wonderland forever.
Kyouya only managed the madness that occurred there as was fitting of his role in the story. But, the story would end. Graduation would come.
Reality would follow.
He sometimes wondered if he was the only one who definitively knew this.
But for the time being, Tamaki was the Mad Hatter that was the self-appointed and rather idiotic master of that world. In the background, Kyouya’s own Black Queen would remain on the fringes of both the world of the storybook and the world without and document and understand what happened in both. However, as a third son, he was perfectly cognizant that he was not free to leave Wonderland by himself.
Because only Alice, who the storybook land thought should be at its will, could actually move freely between the two worlds.
And it was an interesting gamble to try to discern exactly whom she would bring out of the surreal world when all was said and the perfunctory “happily ever after” was added.
For now, Kyouya would merely regard her as an aberration within his plans and hope that she never turned into more.
But Haruhi Fujioka was certainly making it more interesting than he ever thought it could be.
As the scenery outside the darkly tinted windows changed to something calmingly familiar, Kyouya sighed tiredly, thinking that his mind had run away with him…or perhaps that some of Tamaki’s nonsense was finally rubbing off on him.
Indeed, the game could only become more interesting from here on.
And, for now, he was in control of the board.
And he had no doubt that he could manipulate the rest of the pieces to prevent the Rook from driving the King into checkmate…or Alice from showing them that Wonderland was a well-crafted dream.
But, for once he was uncertain that a profit motive would win out.
…but again with the foolishness.
Kyouya decided that sleep was what he needed to cure his recent rash of nonsensical thoughts.
The red break lights of the other limousine, making its long way up the sloping driveway of the Ootori mansion only a few feet in front of his own vehicle, flashed briefly and drew his attention.
His thoughts were forcibly directed away from the absurdity of Wonderland and back to the chessboard at hand.
Who knew what his father would say to his brothers when he stepped out of the back seat. Perhaps they would both be surprised that the third son that so little was expected from had managed to accomplish so much…and, perhaps, had even exceeded the accomplishments of the favored two.
However, they would also notice that the person who their father spoke so highly of at the moment had not even been accorded the courtesy of riding with his father in the same car in his moment of victory.
At this thought Kyouya yet again smiled, although there was a slightly bitter edge to it.
Perhaps that is why he understood Tamaki’s situation so very well.
The difference between riding in the second Ootori Rolls Royce and living within Suoh Mansion #2 was only a matter of duration…not necessarily of significance.
But hopefully, in both regards, that would change.
Stepping out of the car and following at a short distance behind his father, Kyouya knew that he could only take one fact for granted.
The game could only become more interesting from here.
Fin
A/N: Here is Kyouya’s take on the events of the Cultural Festival. I really wanted to play with the dynamics of Haruhi and Tamaki, specifically how Tamaki is sort of a force of creation and how Haruhi could potentially become a divisive force if she ever is paired off with anyone. Kyouya, however, would probably be the only one to realize this…although I’m not sure how much of that original idea actually ended up in this fic. Instead, a bunny concerning the dichotomy of the Host Club’s sort of artificial world and the Haruhi’s world of reality sort of ran away with the fic…I blame the influence of Lady_Stargazer’s truly superb fic “Miles to Go Before I Sleep.” If you haven’t read it, by all means do. Anyways, recs and notes aside, thank you all for reading. If you left me some comments, I would truly love you! Wow…author’s note is egregiously long…sorry!