Copy and paste the standard disclaimer here: _ _ _. By the way, this fanfic is quite long, but not that long

Ode to the Falling Rain

He stands in the shadow of intertwined tree branches, glimpsing the silent procession of crosses into infinity through a sliver of light. He shifts his eyes and sees her standing before a marble tombstone with her head bowed in a position of prayer and mock submissiveness. A bouquet of roses wilts at the base of the marker. Someone had laid it there long ago with careful, loving hands.

A little girl clings to the old ivory fabric of her skirt. She doesn't bother to hide the distrust in her eyes as she sees him lurking among the border of trees. The skies are streaked with the charcoal paleness of an impending rain while the child unclenches her hand and walks away.

"I'll wait for you in the car." she says. She moves out of his view, titian strands of hair trailing behind her like gauzy ribbons in the breeze. He smiles as the child disappears. He steps out of the cast-latticed shadows and into the ashen light, startling her as she kneels and places flowers on the soil.

"Treize?" he hears her murmur. She shakes her head. Disbelief reflects itself in her face and then embarrassment, beneath her surprised tears. She drops a flower from her hand. She had taken the wilted roses away and had placed another bouquet, cheerful sunflowers this time, as the dark single eyes stare up blindly at the rainy-day sky from a corona of saffron petals. He smiles again, half-mockingly at her.

"She doesn't look a lot like him, doesn't she?" he asks. "You only see the similarity in the eyes " She stands up and brushes an errant strand of hair away from her eyes. No wonder you enjoyed working with her, he thinks wryly. She's beautiful. Ha, you did never give us a chance with the girls, brother. And look, she's crying for you as those charmed girls always do. But you don't always love them. I wish you loved her this time.

"I don't want to be rude, but please leave me alone," she says coldly, walking away. He watches her feet sink into the bald areas of soil where grass had failed to grow. Solid clumps cling to the soles of her shoes.

"You're being rude," he calls after her. She throws him a look and tries to walk faster. She almost stumbles, holding on to a rusted metal gate carelessly left open into the path. She lets go of the metal grille and keeps on walking with uncertainty dogging her footsteps.

He trails after her, knowing that security guards are following their every move. He feels like an obsessed shadow following a goddess. "I don't know who you are, or what you want. But I know what I want- it's for you to go to hell."

"You're the one who has my brother's child? No need to ask that, I know- it's pretty obvious."

She stops walking and turns to look at him, a stricken sheen flitting in her pale brown eyes for a single moment then lifting away. Cinnamon, he thinks. Her eyes are the color of cinnamon. He tries to rid himself of sentimental musings as she starts to walk away again. The rain starts to weep tears, opalescent watery strokes as they fall to earth. They shatter into spheres as they meet the ground. She starts to run as the smell of wet soil assaults their nostrils and envelops them in a miasma of steam. He calls after her, "Wait. Look, I'm sorry. Come back here. I just want to talk to you." She keeps on running, faster, faster that he's afraid that she might slip and fall to the ground and break. Wisps of her hair fly behind her, raindrops caught and glistening in her chestnut tresses.

"What are you doing?" a childish voice asks behind his back. He stops running and turns, meeting a pair of eyes like his own. Their sapphire blue color's almost impossible in its clarity. They're blazing with anger in a little girl's face. "Go away." A little smile twists her child's lips, sardonic and amused at the same time. The light in her eyes continues even as the rain seeps every light into its darkness.

"Mariemeia, I told you to stay in the car. You're drenched." She stands behind the child, smoothing the unruly cloud of red hair with a hand. Mariemeia looks up at her and smiles again. he's surprised as she's transformed into a trusting, gentle little girl. "Now go. I'll talk with him. I was just surprised, I wasn't afraid. So go now or you'll get sick. It'll be just awhile."

"But-."

"Go. And change your clothes. You have some in the trunk." The rain falls harder, lashing out its anger upon them. Water drips down their faces as they stare at each other, he, trying to decipher the complexity of the depth of her eyes, while she stares at him with hostility. "All right," she says finally. "Talk."

"I just want to see how she's doing."

"Oh, really? Why the sudden interest?" She moves toward a stone pavilion set in the center of that morbid cemetery. From there, he can still see the lines of monuments; perfect faces of marble angels, clumps of flowers, all drowning in the rain. "I'm surprised. So finally, the Khushrenada family sends out its emissary to inquire about Mariemeia's welfare. Maybe next time you'll want to take her away from me. And if you do I'll fight for her."

"Don't worry. Nobody sent me out; they don't even want to know what her name is. I came on my own free will," he says, raising his right hand. "I promise I'm telling the truth." Rivulets of water stream down to the marble floor and form tiny glassy pools. She sits on a stone bench. The moss clinging to the stone exuding a smell of neglect. She shakes her head and smiles at him for the first time, a smile not sarcastic but only sad. So you really want to know, she seems to say. That's good.

"She's been accelerated again, this time to middle school, though some of the teachers were reluctant to do so. They say it won't be normal for a seven-year old child. They wanted to keep her in sixth grade. And do you know, or will you care, that some children treat her as if she's some kind of freak?"

"Yes, I do care. She is my niece, after all. Why don't you hire a private tutor for her? It's something you could afford."

"She's a lonely child, and sometimes she wants companionship. But she told me once that she craves for loneliness. I know that it's some kind of communion with silence. I respect her decision, and it is her decision to stay in school." She stops talking, as if caught unprepared to speak or is about to reveal a devastating secret. Her tone softens, her eyes downcast to the floor. She smiles again, sadder this time. He isn't surprised at what she said next.

"When I saw you I thought you were Treize," she says. "I kept on hoping that maybe he's alive. Like Zechs, that maybe he'll come back. We never found the body, and that's what made it worse." Tears start to form in her eyes. They're crystalline in the fading diluted light of rain. She runs a hand over her eyes, as if by doing so the tears will not break free of their prison walls and cascade down her face.

"Yeah. I know. They told me." He looks at the tragic shriveled forms of trees dying in the rain. He couldn't understand something, trying to grasp at it but still falling into a yawn of misunderstanding. A silence stretches between them. He pictures the silence as opaque and heavy. He sees a marble angel holding out its arms, empty, asking for a child. Marble and water tears are running down the curves of its cold cheeks. Its wings were folded in a useless way around its body to protect the child not there.

"I'm sorry," she finally says. She stands up saying, "I apologize for my behavior." Banal formalities repeated over and over again. She holds out her hand for a diplomatic handshake. He takes it, feeling the delicate warmth of her skin beneath his hand.

"Likewise. I should have requested for an appointment instead of intruding on your private plans, Lady Anne." All we need now is to bow and curtsy, he says to himself, like we always do. It's called play-acting in real life. She smiles again and runs out into the rain. A figure moves toward her, holding an umbrella to shield her from the rainfall. He stays behind. He keeps on watching her as she disappears behind the curtain of rain-tears. He holds up his hand and stares at it, smiles, and waits for the rain to stop.

***

It rains into the oblivion of the night. She hears someone crying over the breaking glass and whispered nighttime conversations of shadows, footfalls running through the corridor, pleas. Wailing and pleading for something. She opens her eyes and gets out of bed. She stumbles out of her room and into darkness. She finds a phantasm with titian hair and tearful blue eyes standing in front of her door, looking like a dejected tossed-away doll. Or an oneiric figure stepping outside her dream world.

"Mei? What are you doing here? It's the middle of the night, why are you still awake?" She takes her daughter's hand, leads her into the room. "Are you all right?" she asks her. Tears are running down her child's face. She wipes them off with her fingers. "Are you okay?"

"No! Mommy, don't leave me here!"

"I'm not going to leave you," she whispers soothingly. Mariemeia doesn't respond; her eyes fastened to some unknown point in front of her. The rain continues to fall, beating against the windowpane. It's like some homeless beggar wanting to be let in through the window, away from the outside noise and loneliness. Mariemeia continues to dream with open eyes and talk to nightmare people, frozen in the cast rectangle of light reaching out from her mother's room.

"You're not dead. You can't be dead." She starts to sob louder, tears falling again. She kneels before Mariemeia and embraces her tightly, heartbeat against heartbeat. She's trying to wake her up. "I'm all alone now, all alone."

"No, no she's not. You're not. You're not alone. Mei, come on, wake up."

The child finally walks out of the fog of her nightmares and looks at her with the same crystal blue eyes that were often present in the most tormenting of her dreams. "What am I doing here?" she asks.

"You had a nightmare," she answers. She doesn't add, You're sleepwalking too. Why are you crying? Why don't you tell me? I want to know.

"My mother died a long time ago." Mariemeia confides in a whisper, her small arms encircling her neck, holding on like someone rescued from a hungry river. She presses her cheek against hers. "You won't die on me, will you?"

"Of course not, I won't. I won't leave you for the world," she says, trying to suppress an unwanted smirk. Quite ironic, she thinks. "Come, let's get you back to your room." They walk down the darkened hallway to the empty room. She pushes the door open, staring into the darkened room. She looks for lurking monsters, says, "Lights on." She ushers her child in to the square box of saffron fluorescence. She tries to ignore the rain as it hits the tin roof with its ineffectual tears.

***

The streets are flooded with the unexpected deluge. Dead leaves fall from trees and floating on the brackish water- their own muddy necropolis. There's the smell of mud. It's dirty, smelling of rotten leaves and the unanswered prayers of people for the rain to stop. She holds the broken glass pieces in her hand, crying over it. The weak sunlight lies reflected in the glassy heart. She's sorry that she broke the glass bird, so sorry, she did this.

"Why are you crying?" She looks up, sees the man who looks like her father. The man who's been trying to talk to her for the last two weeks, even before the punishment of rain started. She frowns and turns away to look out of the window, the vehicles submerged in water. She remembers mechanical turtles. She smells candle wax and incense, dead flowers, confessions- the smells of an old church. She doesn't really believe in God, because, as her grandfather said, God is only some imagined sadist laughing at people. So, what is she doing here in a church?

"Are you praying?" the man asks. She shakes her head, hiding the broken wings of the crystal bird. He smiles at her, benevolent. So much like a holy image of a saint. He sits beside her on the pew, stretching his legs out.

"Nope. I don't even believe in God. You can't do that here; you're getting mud on the floor. Who are you?" she asks bluntly, the way a little child might without thinking about the words coming from her mouth. "Get lost." She mutters under her breath. She fingers the crystal slivers in her hand, finally showing it to him. "Here. Look at this."

"What's that?" he asks. She smiles again.

"Who are you?" she repeats her question. She wants to ask, Are you my father? Did you come back from the dead? It's impossible, and why should she want her father back? He didn't even want her, didn't even try to find out what happened to her and her real mother. She's not grieving. She's carrying hatred in her heart instead of the saccharine love that little girls should feel for a dead father. She looks away from him and looks at one statue. The saint of the celestial roses, the Gothic letters at its feet proclaim. The gentle ivory face looks at her placidly with peace on its delicate carved features and in its brown glass eyes. She thinks that the saint looks like her other mother with the synthetic chestnut hair attached to its scalp and rosebud mouth, rosary in hand.

"I'm your father's brother, your uncle. I'm-"

She doesn't listen to him. She takes one of his hands and places the shattered fragments in his hand. She genuflects, makes the sign of the cross, the way they taught her. Maybe she should walk on bent knees and maybe pray the rain will stop falling.

***

He steps out of the rain and into the cool, dry interior of the building. Why is he doing this? What is there to gain, anyway? He wants his brother's child, the beautiful woman who wept for his dead brother. Why the sibling rivalry? Treize's dead, a long time ago, but no one could ever forget him. And who is he, but a man cowering in the shadow cast by his valiant, handsome brother. He's nobody, actually, but the younger brother, the so-called black sheep of the family because he didn't join the Specials when he had the chance and didn't even try. He's starting to torture himself again. Hadn't he already cut a figure in the legal world? One of the best and youngest lawyers, really, so why all this?

He stops walking and holds up his hand again. The hand had touched hers. He remembers her sad smile. He realizes that there's something to be gained after all, even though unobtainable as a fading syllable of a note.

"Anne," he whispers. Grace. He waits for her.

The desk receptionist hurries towards Anne, smiling a teasing smile. She holds out a basket of perfect roses, pure white, tinged with a blush of roseate at the center. Anne stares at the roses, surprise evident in her eyes. She could never hide her emotions, he thinks. They always come out on her face. She leans forward to talk to the receptionist, her face serious. He catches some of the murmured words.

"They came from whom?"

"I don't know ma'am. No card." She frowns. Anne enters her office, maybe locking her doors. She leaves the roses with the receptionist. Her doors slide open with a gentle hiss of air. Again, the surprise is evident on her face. He smiles to himself. Has she seen his surprise for her? Maybe yes.

"Look at this." She beckons to the woman, standing just outside the wide-open door, about to show the sepia-toned scenery that lies inside, free from the falling rain. He smiles sadly and turns away.

***

She stands framed by the doorway, staring at her office. Someone had transformed it into a lovers' bower with candles in crystal containers burning through the sheen of rain and redolence of flowers. The other woman stands behind her, gasping in- is it awe, surprise, or the guilty admittance of conspiracy? She doesn't know. She's too embarrassed to ask. She couldn't enter the room, feeling her presence disturb the phantoms of shadow-lovers making love in that room.

"Well," she says, turning to the woman behind her. "Do you know something about this?" The woman shakes her head, shrugs. She grins a little sheepishly and hurries back to her desk. She riffles through her ledger again; searching for a name that holds any promise of alchemy in that mess of words. She comes up with nothing.

"I think it's from a secret admirer, I guess, Miss Une," the woman says with another nonchalant shrug and guilt-edged smile. She shakes her head and sits down on a chair, pulling drawers open. She's hoping to produce some magic answer.

"What am I going to do?" she asks the woman. "I can't very well work in there and receive ass-kicking people. What will they think when they come to my office? That I'm trying to seduce them to soften up?" It's very simple, actually, she thinks to herself. Throw those flowers out, give them away, and hurt whoever sent them. Why don't I just go on and spread my reputation as a cold-hearted bitch that they think I am?

"They'll think that you have a lover," she retorts. " And I think it's about time. Why don't you have one? People are starting to think that you and that Chinese boy are having a fling," she adds with an evil grin. She turns away and resumes her work, people passing and stopping by the huge desk. "I'm telling you- keep those flowers. You don't know how lucky you are. And yeah, keep your office that way, ma'am. It suits you better. Let them think that you have a lover. I'm really curious about you having none. Or do you?" again the evil grin. She shrugs, surprised, and shakes her head.

"Yes, why don't I have one?" she taunts herself by asking. "For your information that Chinese boy and I are not having a fling. And why I don't have a lover?" She smiles, shrugs like the receptionist and walks back towards her silent office. "Number one reason- Mariemeia," she says aloud, too cheerfully to anyone who might hear, in her false bright voice. "And reason number two?" she says as the doors glide open. This time it's softer, like the echo of a beloved hymn. "Treize."

***

She sits by the window, watching the pallid rain splash against the glass. Previous rains have dried on the window and had made patterns of tear-tracks. She waits for her mother in the silent room smelling of thick candle-smoke. "Let's go home," she says as she enters the room. She looks out of the window again- night has fallen a long time ago. She didn't realize it; the rain had obscured the skies with its falling haze.

***

She tries to listen to her daughter's chattering over the noise of the passing vehicles and water. She catches only a few words and scattered phrases- "called me freak so I broke"… What did her daughter break, why did they call her freak? She's normal, she's a person too, a child who cries when she had nightmares and loses her temper like all children. "I'm sorry, so I went to church. Isn't that such an irony? I don't even believe in God; I'm an atheist. I'm sorry, I know that I'm acting like a spoiled brat. Still I think it's human nature. I might be normal after all."

"There's nothing wrong with you. Look, you mental abilities are only more advanced than most children's." She expects her daughter to start screaming, You're lying! Go eat your lies, you always lie to me. But she hears nothing, only the rustle of the windshield wipers moving across the glass and the pain-filled silence between them. None of them could say anything else. She twists the steering wheel in her hands and feels the flux of blood in them, flowing freely; telling her that she's still alive. She stares at the thick white lines slipping under the wheels of the car, at the black asphalt road.

"Tomorrow will be Luce's baby shower. I want you to be there, kid." Her daughter looks at her. Her blue eyes are yellowish in the passing luminescence. She smiles and looks away.

"I've got to go to school."

"Saturday. No school. Mei, do you have a problem, other than those children teasing you? Maybe I should just hire a-" Mariemeia cuts off the flow of her voice with a sad, tear-filled look. She starts to cry. She is, after all, only a little girl. "Mei, go on, cry. It's not bad to cry." And when I was younger, I told myself that crying is only for weaklings. But Mei isn't a weakling; she's even stronger than I am. "Come on, tell me what your problem is."

"I'm a freak," she sobs. "I don't know. I don't want to go to school anymore." She parks the car, letting go of the steering wheel. She smoothes out Mariemeia's hair as she always does to calm her down, letting her cry. "They say that I'm a monster. A chromosomal defect, or something. They don't even understand what they're talking about. They're only kids, but how could they be so cruel? I'm a monster, I think they're right. Maybe they're right, it's bad blood. I bet I'll go on killing people." Bad blood? She thinks. Why bad blood? Have they forgotten who her father is?

"You don't have bad blood, and you're perfect, physically. For one thing there's nothing wrong with your genotype," she murmurs over the inconsistent babbling of her child. Mariemeia stops sniffling and straightens up. She wipes her tears away with her fingertips, looking for a handkerchief. She gives her a tissue and hears a murmured "Thank you." Mariemeia smiles a little and asks, "Why did you adopt me?"

She couldn't answer for a while. "It's because we're both survivors. I did it for your father, and because, well, I pitied you. They've been using you. And there's more, I just couldn't explain it now. Maybe later I'll understand. I kind of don't really know just yet." Mariemeia looks at her.

"Let's go home, Mom," she says, looking away and out of the window. There's nothing to look at outside, really, but some floating lights and darkness and not much else.

She feels a little sad, still feels a little incomplete inside. This is the first time that any child had called her 'Mom.'

***

He waits outside. He feels the rain falling around him, hitting the umbrella he holds in his hand. He stares at the rectangle of yellow light coming from a window, throwing patterns of diamonds on the wet cement of the street. He looks up and sees a glimpse of her face through the veil of insubstantial curtains, the sad look. She doesn't see him. She's still tumbling down the rabbit-hole of her sadness and the traces of her grief. She finally sees him with blind eyes, but she smiles sadly at him. Maybe she doesn't really see him at all. Maybe tomorrow she'll see him, finally. But it's something he doesn't really know. She closes the window and its mullioned panes force the light back into the room.

***

He's standing outside; she knows. She dares not look out, but she looks and sees his shadow there. It's tangled up with the vespertine blackness. She fumbles with her locket, fingers the fragile porcelain rose growing out of the golden heart. The front of the locket springs open, unveiling a face with blond hair and green eyes- her real mother. She never really wears this, unless gnawed by her phobia of darkness and solitude. Mommy, she wants to cry out. Mommy, he's out there, he's a ghost, talk to him before he gets me. She lies in the dark and feels cold inside. He'll be gone tomorrow, she thinks. He'll be gone; he won't be there when I wake up. I'm going to cry again. Daddy, Daddy, don't you love me? So much for my Electra complex. Who were you kidding when you said that daughters are attracted to their fathers, huh, Sigmund Freud? Yourself? Who were you trying to fool?

"Mei, are you sure you're all right?" she hears her mother call out. She stifles a cry, then says, "Yes. I'm okay. Don't worry about me." But she really isn't.

***

She looks out her window. Her insomnia torments herself again. Tomorrow things will be better, she thinks. I'm thinking of you again. When will you ever go away? She expects him to be standing behind her when she turns around, but he's not there. She smiles and decides against calling caterers and florists. She stares at the wooden panels of her office and at the blank screen of the computer, resisting the impulse to check everything again. She rubs her forehead with her hand, ignoring the headache sitting on her brain.

"For goodness' sake, Mommy, it's midnight." She hears a small voice say from the next room. "The world won't collapse if you go to sleep." Her daughter's right. Nobody needs her anymore during the night, except for the welcoming arms of sleep.

***

She's envious, seeing her friend pregnant and happy, finally. She feels shattered inside, failed as a woman. She thinks that she's even barren and not really human. Is this how her daughter feels like at school, the feeling of being inhuman? She laughs with the other people and congratulates her radiant friend. She tries to shake confetti out of her hair and finally retreats to a corner, slumping against the wall. She tries not to feel defeat.

"And so the earth's population soars upward again. Duh. It's nothing to be happy about," a sarcastic voice says beside her. She turns, smells and sees the incorporeal form of cigarette smoke. She sees a black-haired woman smoking grumpily behind the smokescreen. "Hell. Sorry, ma'am. Didn't recognize you." She finishes smoking and grinds the cigarette butt beneath her heel. She smiles apologetically and walks away. She leaves a small, smoking hole in the carpet, an unwanted remembrance. She swaggers unnecessarily in her Preventers uniform.

"I'd like to talk with you in my office," she calls after the woman with black hair. She frowns to herself and inspects the hole in the carpet. All the while she's trying to ignore the fact that the woman had flouted her authority while she's present and watching. Somebody calls her name and she looks up. The desk receptionist again. What's her name? Pauline or Colleen? This time she's holding an envelope in her hand, thrusting it towards her. She says with the same sheepish smile, "So, the secret admirer's still stalking you and your kid?"

"What do you mean?" she asks Pauline or Colleen. The woman looks at her with large, surprised eyes. She opens her mouth to speak, saying, or asking, "You mean you don't know that someone's following you?"

"No. Would I ask you if I do?" she asks derisively. "Do you know who he is, or at least how he looks like?" Treize? She wants to ask out loud. Is that you?

"Well, he's tall, with golden-brown hair, maybe. I think he's got blue eyes, like Mei's. Handsome. He looks like someone I saw on the news once. Hell, I don't know. He said to give this to you. Sorry if I disturbed you, ma'am." She turns her back and walks away, leaving her to stare at the rain-splattered envelope in her hands. It's impenetrable and concealing. If she looks closely, maybe she'll find that there's an invisible aureole of longing floating around it.

A longing for her?

"They've already forgotten about you," she says aloud, filled with a sudden remorse. "They couldn't remember who you are anymore, Treize. I'm sorry. I couldn't keep your memory alive. But are you really dead?" She rips the damp envelope open, staring at the neatly folded papers inside dotted with fallen drops of rain. She takes one out and reads it. The letter looks as if he wrote it, in his careful script. Maybe even a resurrected man wrote it. But there's something about it that isn't him. She runs up to Pauline or Colleen. The woman stops walking and looks at her, surprise repeated in her dark gray overcast eyes.

"Where did he go?" she asks.

"Who?"

"The man who told you to give this to me?" Please tell me, she wants to yell. Tell me, tell me. The woman shrugs, says, "He was still in the lobby when I left to deliver that to you. Maybe he's gone now. I don't know, as I said earlier. Ma'am, what's the matter? Are you all right? You look…sick." She places the letters on the floor and starts to run again, down the stairs spiraling to nowhere. She doesn't even bother taking the empty elevator posed before her with open doors.

"Mommy? Where are you going?" Mariemeia calls out to her, panic in her voice. She shakes her head and tells her to stay at the party. Voices drift down to her, exclamations over the pretty gifts, the beautiful décor. It's the same withered façade worn at a party. "No, I'm going with you."

"Stay there. I'll be back." By now she's in the lobby, scanning people's faces for that strange man. She goes out of the building, ignoring the people staring at her. There's a whisper going through them. All of them are false rumors. "What, another war? Are you sure? Is that why she's been jumpy for the last three days?" " I don't think so; maybe she's, well, you know, 'this.'" "No way, I don't think she's that stupid to do that. But somebody's been sending her stuff these days; they just hide it from her because she tells them to. So maybe you're right, or else she's crazy." Followed by ribald laughter, not caring if she heard what they said. She tries to ignore them.

She's standing outside. The rain has been reduced finally to a misty drizzle. She looks around her and sees mud, fallen leaves drowning in water. She isn't surprised that he's not there anymore. This is crazy, she thinks. She smiles at her face in the sullied water swirling through the sewers. She lets the silent, clear rain fall on her. The sun's already shimmering through wisps of gray sadness. The rain suddenly stops falling as a shadow darkens the skies. She looks up, sees his crystalline blue eyes, the shade of the umbrella he's holding in his hand a black stigma on the purity of his cyan eyes.

"Will you love me?" he asks bluntly. There's a note of sadness in his voice and eyes. She smiles again and thinks, But he's not you. She stands on tiptoe among the fallen leaves and dirty water and kisses his cheek, saying, "Maybe." She holds out her hand to feel the rain. It has stopped falling already.