Red Bride
Chapter 1/1
By Baine
Email: ladybaine@gmail.com
Written: July 21, 2004
First Edited and Posted: October 31, 2006 (For SMRFF’s TAFF Day 2006!)
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AN at bottom
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Red Bride
By Baine
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She stared at herself in the mirror. So prim, so proper. A curl of hair cascading down her cheek. A rose as white as her dress tucked behind her ear. A dress that clung in all the right places and pooled in excess at her feet. And a smile painted on her face.
This was it. The day that changed everything. Her day to shine. Her friends had flown in from across the country to be with her today. They were waiting for her next door, already clinging to their Kleenex.
If today was supposed to be the happiest day of her life, then why was the smile on her face as real as the Louis Vuitton bag that she bought last week in Chinatown?
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. As a child, she thought that one day she would live a fairy tale life. Well, she had gotten her wish, all right. If only she had known exactly what it was that she had been wishing for.
Few people have the opportunity to star in their very own fairytale, but she, Tsukino Usagi, was one of the lucky ones. What child expects to literally find out that she’s a princess destined to become queen of the world with a dashing prince at her side?
Sure, she had dreamed about it. But she never expected for it to actually happen. And now that it had, her inner child realized something very important. Fairytales aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.
She adjusted the sleeves of her dress, dragging them a bit further down onto her shoulders. A dress fit for a princess. A dress designed specifically for her. It was gorgeous. When she finally walked down the aisle today, his jaw would drop.
She had to admit, she was looking forward to that. After all these years and after everything that they had been through together, he could still be so distant at times. She always spent a lot of effort trying to impress him, yet so often he simply stared right through her as though she were nothing more than a ghost from the past...which, in a way, she was.
After all, they wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for the past. When they met up, the timing hadn’t been right. She had been seriously dating someone else. He had been engaged. Hell, they hadn’t even gotten along!
Of course, after remembering their past lives, everything had changed. As she merged with her past self, she received the memories of the past...the feelings of a love once lost. Feelings are fickle creatures. They ensnare you and transpose themselves into your being, changing the way you think and feel about things. Her modern-day feelings for Mamoru had been replaced by older feelings of love despite the fact that she had never felt even a tickle of attraction toward him before they had invaded her being. The same thing happened to him as well. They went from being enemies to lovers in the blink of an eye. Granted, those feelings made them remember everything that they had shared together and enabled them to love anew, but they also destroyed everything else in the process.
She had always hated being told what to do. She had never been a rebellious child, but she had always been defiant and refused to do anything unless she decided that it was in her own best interests. And here was destiny telling her who to love and marry. So of course she had been defiant. This wasn’t the life that she had envisioned being thrown into. This wasn’t the destiny that she had set out to achieve.
Their relationship leading up to today had been a constant roller coaster of ups and downs. They could hurt each other so much with their bitter words...and so much of that bitterness stemmed from the situation that they found themselves thrust into. Of course, they could also be sickeningly sweet to one another when the mood suited them. After all, they did love each other. Their past selves wouldn’t allow them to forget that tiny detail.
To the world around them, the couple was head over heels in love. They complemented each other in every way. Where she was light, he was dark. Where he was more grounded to earth, she tended to soar through the clouds. They fit together perfectly, and one was never seen without the other.
And they were in love. She loved him with all of her heart, and she knew he felt the same. The way people perceived them wasn’t wrong. There was just...so much more to them than what anybody else saw.
And then the resentment. Always and forever, the underlying sense of resentment.
Her past should not automatically be her future, nor should his. It wasn’t fair to either of them.
She had locked herself in her bedroom and cried for weeks after dumping the guy she had been dating in favor of Mamoru. She had truly loved him. She loved them both. But it was different. She was destined to wind up with Mamoru. Why prolong the inevitable only to feel even more pain later? She wouldn’t put him through that. She wouldn’t put herself through that. With that in mind, she did the only thing she could do...and it still hurt. At the time, she had cried not only for herself, but for him as well. Why didn’t she have a shot at discovering love for herself? Why couldn’t they have a chance to explore whatever road life might have envisioned for them? Instead, she was forced to trade him in for something that her past decided to hand down to her. She never had the chance to pick it out herself.
She wasn’t the only one who thought this way, either. She knew that Mamoru hadn’t been very happy breaking off his engagement. After he did it, he had never spoken about the matter again. It was as if it had never occurred.
If he wasn’t getting married to her today, he would already be settled down. He would have a wife and kids. He would have the perfect picket fence and the pet dog that came barreling down the driveway whenever it heard him pull up in the family car.
Granted, he could also be divorced now. The marriage might never have happened. The same could be said about herself. She didn’t know for sure that the relationship she had been in would have lasted. For all she knew, she would still be standing here today getting ready to marry Mamoru. The only difference was that if this were to be the case, it would be because the two of them had chosen to be together. Only a tiny detail, to be sure, but it’s these small, often-overlooked threads that have the potential to make all of the difference in the world.
It was one subject that they never broached. They never brought it up, never talked about it. They just accepted the fact that they had both loved another and left it at that. They both knew that the lives that they had envisioned had been obliterated before their very eyes thanks to the strings of Lady Destiny. They had become her puppets. Were they only together because it amused her? Didn’t what they wanted count for anything in the game of life?
Despite this—or maybe because of it—their pain and resentment continued to live on. So much of the bitterness in their relationship stemmed from it. It always would.
She hadn’t wanted it to be like this. Neither of them had. They had never dreamed that their lives truly weren’t their own. Unlike everyone else in the world, they didn’t have that luxury.
She could feel Destiny’s strings twisting around her, settling around her throat and choking the very life from her lungs. Why couldn’t she stop thinking about the past and “what if,” especially since she was only moments away from one of the most crucial event of her life. She wasn’t a normal bride. She wasn’t thinking about the man currently waiting for her to make an appearance. No. Instead, she was thinking about everything that had led up to this moment.
This wasn’t baggage that she wanted to take into her new life. This wasn’t something that she was proud of. This was something that would continue building up until the dam burst...and then all hell would break loose.
She had to fix things now before they got any worse. Mamoru truly was the most important thing in her life, but no matter how much she loved him, this clingy thread of resentment kept her from obtaining pure bliss...and it always would. Simply having him wasn’t enough...not in this lifetime. How could they ever be truly happy when each new day continued to whisper about what could have been?
She shivered and stared once more at her reflection. Maybe Mamoru was right to look at her as though she were a ghost. She was certainly pale enough to be one. While she blended in quite nicely with her alabaster dress, it reduced her to a wallflower. You couldn’t see where the dress ended and where she began. She was supposed to be the one wearing the dress...it wasn’t supposed to be the one wearing her.
She needed to do something; she needed...she needed to add some color to her assemble. She stared down at her hand. Her fist was clenched, causing her knuckles to appear even paler than normal. She tightened her grip, causing her fingers to dig into the soft flesh of her palm.
Whoever said that brides needed to wear white? White is only for purity, right? Why not another color...like red? In China, red is the color of life and celebration. Red is a color that excites people; it gets their blood pumping. Red is vibrant. Red can stand for so many things...
She wouldn’t allow herself be a white bride...not today. She slowly unclenched her fist, gazing down at her palm in awe. She brought her eyes up to meet those of the girl staring back at her in the mirror.
Red. The color of life. The color of death. The color that was now dripping onto her once-ivory gown.
She wouldn’t give in to the resentment. It wouldn’t get the best of her. Besides, she had done this once before, hadn’t she? She could do it again.
Of course, last time, the world around her had been exploding. Today, the world of her future was at stake. Happiness wasn’t in it. Her past had blown up. Her future would as well if she continued to ignore what was festering in the background.
From now on, she would do what she wanted to do. She wanted to be happy. Happiness was Mamoru, but their shot at pure happiness in this lifetime had been ruined.
By taking the easy way out, she could be born again...and this time, she would be born in the right time and place.
She shivered just thinking about the possibilities. To live in a world where there would be no resentment or obstacles to overcome. They could fall in love again and there would no longer be any circumstances holding them back.
For her sanity...for his happiness...for their love...she would live her nightmare all over again in order to secure their future.
Today, she would become a red bride.
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New AN: Thank yous go to Kel and Azurite for being awesome editors.
