After much procrastination, I present the delayed Chapter 4. You know you want it. ^_^

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Land of Confusion
by AngelAnne

Chapter 4: Something You Can Say

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"Single white female, looking for potential lover: a one woman man..."

Yaten sighed. She must have been desperate for entertainment, because she was reading the personal ads. She turned the page and peered over her newspaper. Kakyuu was still at the table, playing a quiet game of solitaire. It bothered her. The silence, not the card game. Why was Kakyuu so quiet? They had been sitting her for two hours, and barely a word had been spoken between them.

"Did I do something to deserve the silent treatment?" she asked, putting the paper down in her lap. "Because whatever I did, I'm sorry, I won't do it again, and it was all Seiya's fault."

Kakyuu blinked. Wandering around in her thoughts, she'd forgotten Yaten was even there.

Of course she's here, she's protecting you, she admonished herself. Where was her head these days? She couldn't focus on anything...

She giggled aloud, waving a card in Yaten's direction. "Silly, you didn't do anything. I'm just...thinking."

Yaten shrugged. "Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. But, this paper is incredibly mindless and boring--"

"-- which is exactly what you tell me every day," countered Kakyuu, fluttering her eyelashes innocently. Yaten chose to ignore it.

"-- so unless you're going for something record-breaking with your consecutive solitaire games, could I join you?"

Kakyuu smiled. She ran her hand over the table, and gathered all the cards into one stack. "Are you up for some poker?" she asked.

"Since when do you know how to play poker?" she asked, folding her paper and setting it aside. "I certainly didn't show you, and Seiya's no good at it..."

"Taiki showed me," Kakyuu said simply. "I insisted."

Yaten shook her head. "Oh. That figures. Taiki was always the best at it. She has the best poker face..."

She treaded carefully through the soft red carpet, and made herself comfortable across from Kakyuu as she shuffled the deck. There were lots of things she didn't know about Taiki; her gambling streak was a surprise. Her love for candles was not a surprise, because they were depressing and beautiful and romantic, everything Taiki loved. The fact that her favorites were scented candles was the surprise. After they'd returned home, she let little secrets about her inner self leak out, and Yaten made note of every last one of them.

Kakyuu shuffled the cards in the intricate pattern Taiki had taught her and dealt out the cards to Yaten and herself. Over Kakyuu's shoulder, a portrait of Seiya hung, painted delicately in oils and looking positively life-like.

"Rhys always like that painting," she said, thinking aloud. "It was one of my old ones. I thought it was crap. But he loved it, adored it. He said it captured her essence. He was such a romantic dork, almost worse than Lucas, if anyone could be worse..."

She stopped babbling when she realized Kakyuu was staring at her with wide red eyes, hands stopped in the middle of the table. What had she said? Something about the portrait, and how much Rhys loved---

Rhys. Lucas. Oh...fudge.

"Kakyuu, I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't mean to bring them up."

Kakyuu smiled a tiny half-smile. "Don't apologize, Yaten. We have to think about them sometime, don't we?"

Yaten sucked in a breath. "Yeah, I suppose we do. I haven't thought about them in such a long time."

"I'm sure they'd understand." Kakyuu finished dealing cards to the both of them, and then picked up her own.

Yaten examined her cards. Yuck, a horrible hand. "I guess," she said. "But..."

"But...what?" Kakyuu put her cards down on the table. A royal flush. "I win."

She used every fiber of self-control to keep her jaw from dropping. "...that's not possible!"

Her queen smiled sweetly. "Of course it is! Now, you couldn't possibly have a better hand than that."

Yaten looked down at her cards, and placed them on the table with a defeated sigh. "But...I wish there was something we could have done to save them."

Kakyuu gathered the cards. "'Save them'?You mean, you don't think they survived?"

"You know Lucas is dead. And Rhys and Va...With so many starseeds still missing? Highly unlikely."

"How do you know their starseeds were taken? And even if they were, how do you know that they won't come back?"

Yaten brushed silvery bangs out of her eyes. "Galaxia gladly shattered Lucas into thousands of pieces. How do you know she didn't do the same to---"

"She didn't," Kakyuu interrupted, pointing a slender finger at Yaten. "and you know it. Because if they were dead, you would feel it. You don't, do you?"

"No. No...I don't."

"Then he's alive somewhere. Now stop being so melodramatic. Another round of poker, or maybe blackjack this time?"

Yaten grinned. "Oh, so now you can play blackjack? You couldn't possibly do that more than once."

"Want to put some money where your mouth is, sweetheart?"

A few coins were placed in the center of the table.

"Oh, come on, Yaten, you carry more money on you than that," admonished Kakyuu. "Just admit that you're afraid I'm going to win."

Another few coins, and a good sized stack of bills. "I'm not afraid. I'm cheap, and you know it," said Yaten. "Now, you add some money."

A huge stack of bills appeared on the table.

"Oh, for crying out loud...Where did all that come from?"

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

"Fair enough. Go ahead and deal."

"...There you go. Hit?"

"Yeah."

"So? What do you have?"

"Nineteen," said Yaten, turning her cards over triumphantly.

"Oh, so close..." Kakyuu turned her cards over. They added up to twenty-one exactly. Yaten just stared at her.

"I win, Yaten," said Kakyuu, collecting her winnings.

Yaten blinked. "Ahhh...Want to play again?"


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"What's wrong with Taiki?" said Rhys. He handled the ancient clay teapot with the utmost care as he carried it from the kitchen between long, webbed fingers.

"She caught a cold last night," said Seiya. "Doesn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain. I dragged her along with me because I was too much of a wimp to confront you myself."

Rhys chuckled as he poured a cup of tea for each of them. "You're not a wimp."

"I am very much a wimp," she said, taking a sip of the tea. "Mm, good stuff. What is it?"

"Arcadia and water rose [1]."

Seiya nearly choked. "Are you kidding me?" she sputtered. "That must have cost a fortune!"

"It does if you buy it at any market on Kinmoku," he said. "I bought a case from the tea shop in Proteus Square."

"Proteus Square? You've been back to Mermaid, then," she stated, taking a much smaller sip of tea this time. "What does it look like? How are the people?"

"Eh, they'll be alright," he said, resting his head on top of his hands. "Mother and Father managed to survive, and most of the starseeds have come back. Not as many as we'd hoped, but still a great deal. You have to be realistic in situations like this..."

"Do they know you're okay?"

"I didn't actually talk to my family," he said. She raised thin eyebrows in surprise. Rhys put up his hands in defense.

"What? They're still mad that I'm not betrothed to Kakyuu-sama! Better dead than disowned!"

"I can't believe you didn't talk to them," she said, glaring. "Men, you're all the same. Did you talk to your brother, then? Your cousin?"

"Hale is still missing, I'm afraid. But I did talk with Kaisui."

"And?" she prompted him. Seiya could remember Kaisui as a sweet, pretty little girl, with long white hair and deep blue eyes...not the hologram that had ruthlessly taken starseeds and hurt her Odango.

"She's being a lot more like herself again," he said, looking at his teacup. "She's talking more. She wanted me to...apologize on her behalf. For what she became when Galaxia took her starseed."

Seiya finished off her cup of tea, and reached over carefully to pour herself another. "It wasn't her fault. It was Galaxia's. I don't associate Siren with Kaisui."

Rhys smiled. "I'm going back in a few weeks. I'll tell her that."

He sat up and took one of her slender hands in his own. "Enough about me. What have you been doing?"

"Protecting. Rebuilding. And not a whole lot of sleeping," she said.

He nodded. "I noticed. You've got large bags under your eyes."

"Oh, thanks," she said, resting her head in the palm of her hand. "That's good for my self-esteem."

"Psh. Rhys doesn't need to pander to your self-esteem. Your ego is large enough to inflate a gross of balloons and then some."

Seiya rolled her eyes and smiled. "It's good to see you awake, Taiki. Welcome back to the world of the living."

"I wouldn't joke about that if I were you," muttered Taiki, shuffling into the kitchen and finding herself a teacup. The next sentence was muffled, but Seiya heard the words "bleeding" and "pillar".

Seiya felt the bottom of his stomach sink, and she looked down at the table. "Ohh, Taiki...You had the nightmare again?"

"Happens a lot lately," she said drearily, plopping into a chair.

"'The nightmare'?" said Rhys. "What nightmare?"

Taiki bit her lip and stared at her hands while she poured herself a cup of tea.

"Ohhh," he said. "I see."

He peered over his shoulder at the scroll hanging on the kitchen wall. "Well, it is the twenty-third of Fevereiro. This is the anniversary---"

"--of the day we met," finished Taiki. "I suppose it's just my masochistic subconscious acting up again."

It was uncomfortably silent in the room for a moment as people quietly drank their tea and stared fascinated at their hands.

Finally, Seiya cleared her throat. "Taiki, I'm sorry about how I acted yesterday. I was ungrateful and rude."

Taiki shrugged. "Don't worry about it. It's okay."

"No it's not." Seiya reached across the table and took Taiki's hand in hers, which made the brunette jump a little. "I should have thanked you. Instead, I was bitter because you didn't tell me sooner. I can see that you were just trying to protect me."

"Yeah, I suppose I was," Taiki said softly. "You took it so hard when we had to leave without him. And then when we got to Earth, I didn't want to make things worse--"

"Well now I'm thanking you," Seiya interjected. "I know you were trying to help, and that means a lot to me."

The clock began to chime just as Rhys' doorbell began to ring. Over and over and over.

"Alright, alright, I'm coming!" Rhys stood up abruptly, his chair tipping over and hitting the floor with a thud. Taiki and Seiya exchanged a look with each other, but said nothing.

Rhys wrenched the doorknob, muttering about salesmen and their crappy timing, to reveal a furry white jacket with legs.

"...anyone in there?" prompted Rhys. The person, whoever they were, reached up with gloved hands to fiddle with the hood on the jacket. Finally, it came tumbling down...

...to reveal long, blood-red hair and sharp, unamused green eyes.

"You were supposed to meet me downtown half an hour ago," said Vail, crossing his arms. "I demand a damn good explaination."

Rhys craned his neck to look back into his house. "Um...Well, I have one. Really. See, I was tending the flowers. And then..."

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[1] Whee, I totally made up pretty flowers from Mermaid. ^_^ I can do that, it's my canon now! BWAH!

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