Chapter Text
Amami slips and slides across the Palace floors, scrambling across the hallway and squeezing behind heavy brocade curtains, her heart beating faster that the Prince’s rapid fire counting.
“Ready or not!” Soto yells, and Amami wraps herself up in cloth just as a blonde mop of hair flips in the sunlight.
Stocking feet skate across marbled flooring, catching on crumbled wrapping paper and hands catching against the wall. She holds her breath to not gasp when the curtain falls in right next to her before Soto moves… right past her.
She risks a little air to keep up with the racing of her heart. If she can keep hidden just a little bit longer, she’ll be able to slip past him to home base and-
“I found you!”
Amami freezes. No way.
Peeking through the curtains, she watches as her little brother is taken hostage, grunting as he crawls out of his hiding place. Ugh. She thought she got him such a good spot this time!
“I have Ren, Amami!” Soto taunts. “Would you trade yourself for your little brother? Or leave him in my clutches?”
Amami rolls her eyes. Boys.
“If you take too long I’ll throw him in the lava pit!”
Ren makes an excited noise. “Lava! Lava!”
“I’m gonna count to three! One… two… th-”
“Okay, okay!” she shoots her hands up and slides out of her spot. “I surrender!”
Soto’s grin splits his face and he lets go of her brother’s hand. Ren, bless him, toddles over to her.
“That means you lose!” he crows.
“Is that so?” Amami watches as Ren holds his toy cart up to her. Ah. That is how he drew him out. She takes her little brother’s hand in hers. “Well, Prince Soto,” she flourishes with a bow. “It seems you have forgotten the rules to your own game.”
Soto’s grin falters. “What?”
She grins, all teeth. “You haven’t tagged me out.”
“Wait, what?”
Ren squeals as she hoists him up against her hip, groaning under his weight and dragging him across the slippery floor. They both slam to home base, Soto sliding into the wall beside them just two seconds later. His is flushed red.
“That’s not fair!”
Amami laughs, pushing her hair out of her face. “They’re your rules, Highness!” She boops him on the nose with a finger and his face scrunches up. “And that means You’re. Still. It.”
~ ~ ~
It’s that night, after the paper has been cleaned up and the cake destroyed and the presents put away that she sits in her room, their home quiet save the sound of Papa singing Ren to sleep in the other room. Mama sits behind her, slowly combing the gnarls out of her hair.
“Did you have fun today?” she asks, catching a grouping of hair between her fingers so she doesn’t have to feel the pull.
“Mm!” Amami starts to nod before wincing. “Soto’s birthday was a lot of fun. I kept beating him at his games!”
Mama’s reflection in the mirror frowns. “You shouldn’t be so mean to Soto.”
“It’s just play, Mama,” she protest. “He knows! Or else he wouldn’t keep asking me to play hide and go seek with him!”
Mama laughs, the brush breaking free the tangle and moving smoothly over her scalp. “You’re too much like your father.”
“Oh!” Amami bounces. “Maybe Papa would like to play hide and go seek for his birthday, too!”
Mama doesn’t share her excitement. If anything, she looks upset. Maybe she should stop moving while she brushes her hair.
“That’s not really possible, Amami,” she says after a moment.
Amami pouts. “But Papa likes to play games, though.”
“He does,” Mama agrees, setting aside the hairbrush. “He does and I know he would love to play with you and Ren every day.”
“But not on his birthday?”
Mama looks even more upset, but not like when she gets caught skipping her studies. More like when she thinks no one is watching her - when Kiki sighs softly, talking about how she’ll keep trying as she holds a squirming Ren on her lap or when Papa happily crows about how big she is getting.
She gets up, coming to the other side of the chair to squat down in front of her and- Oh. Oh, no. Mama only does this when she did something wrong.
“Do you remember when I explained that Papa grew up all by himself?” she asks, pushing her hair behind her ear. “That he didn’t have a Mama and Papa like you and Ren do?”
Amami frowns. “Papa said they died when he was little.”
Mama’s smile is a little tight, eyes a little watery. “That’s right,” she nods, smoothing her hand across the crown of her head. “So. Because of that, your Papa doesn’t know when his birthday is. Because there was no one to remember for him.”
“So Papa’s never had a birthday party?!” she exclaims, lowering her voice when her Mama hushes her. “No presents or cake or songs or anything?”
Mama nods. “I’ve tried but,” she laughs, rubbing her eyes. “But he always catches me. I’m not as sneaky as you two and he always says it’s not important.”
Amami disagrees.
~ ~ ~
“Come on. Let’s hurry!”
The last touch of winter frosts the air, birds singing as if the days were already warmer and Amami runs across the courtyard. Ren stumbles behind her.
“Sissy,” he mumbles. “Sissy, ‘m cold!”
“Shhhh. I know.” She takes off her scarf, wrapping it around his face. “Wait here! I’ll be right back.”
Ren pouts, whine rising up from his throat and Amami sighs. “Okay, okay. But you can’t make any noise!”
She presses her cheek up against the cool door, the faint sound of conversation bleeding through the wood. Taking hold of the handle, she pulls down with all her weight so the hinges don’t creek and sneaks inside.
“I don’t think it’s necessary that I go to the Yuri’s right now,” Prince Zen says in a tone that reminds her of Soto when he is about to lose a game. “I don’t want to uproot my family because of a little cough.”
Amami closes the door behind her softly, slipping her and Ren behind furniture and moving across the wall to the supply drawers.
“It’s not a little cough, Zen,” Lady Kiki replies. “The doctors said it would pass quickly if you stayed in a warmer climate for a couple of months. Let me handle things for a bit.”
Amami opens the bottom drawers and hands a stack of blank papers to Ren.
Prince Zen sighs, his chair groaning as he leans back and then stands up, crossing to the window.
“Not yet,” he says. “It’s too unstable. With mother gone, I can’t leave the Northern territories. It would be asking for rebellion.”
Lady Kiki sighs. “The Seiran household-”
Amami slowly closes the drawer, body tensing, eyes on her back. Slowly, she cranes her neck and Lady Kiki is staring at her, confused.
“The Seiran household?” Zen prompts.
Kiki turns to look back at Zen. “The Seiran household has held the North for the Clarines long before Her Majesty set foot here. Send Haruka if you think I need assistance.”
Amami slips out of the room as quickly as she came.
~ ~ ~
She had always heard Papa complain to Prince Zen that the kitchens were harder to break into than his office.
After ten minutes of trying to pick the lock with no success, she’s beginning to think he is right.
Amami frowns, working her hair pin between the groves, listening to one click and then two and-
Darn. She lost it again.
Amami sighs, looking over where she left Ren, tearing the sheets of white paper into small and smaller pieces.
What did Mama always say? That it’s always the try that you give up that is the one right before you get it right.
She looks back at the lock, her lips pressed tight, and presses the pick into the hold again.
~ ~ ~
“Kiki said that she saw Amami and Ren in Zen’s office yesterday,” Shirayuki frowns, walking the long and empty corridors to their apartments.
“Oh really?” Obi grins, lacing his hands behind his head. “Do you mean to tell me that Master needs better security for his office? That even a couple of children could sneak inside? That I should tell him, yet again, that we need to go over it?”
Shirayuki represses the urge to roll her eyes. “I mean to tell you that they’re up to something,” she declares, before looking over it him in suspicion. “You wouldn’t happen to know what, would you?”
Obi bats his eyelashes. “I know nothing of what mischief your children might be up to, my Lady.”
Her suspicion grows.
He shrugs, hand latching around the door handle to their home. “Honestly, Shirayuki. I thought they were doing something with you and you always complain about how I ruin surprises-”
“You do!” she sputters.
“You’re not exactly good at keeping secrets,” he winks, swinging the door inward. “Anyway, I just thought-“
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”
Shirayuki’s eyes go wide, a shower of white bits of paper flying out of the room and clinging to her husband’s clothes, sticking to his hair, Obi looking every bit as shocked as she. Too shocked to even protest as Amami’s hands reach out into the hallway and pull him inside their home.
And their daughter, just like her father when he’s excited, is talking a million miles a second. “Mama said that you didn’t have a birthday and that you never let her do anything for you and that you didn’t know when your birthday was so I talked to Ren about it and Ren and I agreed that as soon as we got everything done we can have your birthday so your birthday is now today even though we don’t know exactly when it is so HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAPA!”
Shirayuki follows in Obi’s stupefied wake, staring at the mess of their rooms, tiny pieces of torn paper littering the floor and little colorful bags lining the wall and a lopsided cake set on top the table closest to Obi’s chair.
Her eyes water, hand pressed to mouth.
“Papa,” Ren’s voice is soft, right at their feet, and he is tapping his father’s leg with his toy cart, holding it up to him. “Your toy.”
Shirayuki watches Obi’s face, the way the dry Wilant air and sleepless nights watching over his children has drawn the slightest lines around his eyes, paled just a few hairs at his temples, but in this moment, time slips away. Her husband becomes no more than the boy she never got to meet, eyes glistening and mouth soft in the way they are only for them.
He kneels down. “Ooooh, buddy,” he says, so soft, as if his voice would break the moment. He takes the cart from his son’s hands. “Thank you so much.” He looks over at Amami, bringing his daughter into the circle of his arms and pressing a quick kiss to her cheek. “Thank you both so much.”
She’s going to cry. She just knows it. And then Obi will tease her, but-
But she had always been proud of her children. She doesn’t think that pride could even touch the feeling swelling in her now.
Ren frowns, face scrunching up as Obi thumbs one of the wheels, and then reaches and pulls it gently from his Papa’s hands.
“Ren toy now,” he declares, before heading back towards the table where the lumpy cake tilts dangerously.
Shirayuki chokes a laugh, wiping her eyes at the way Obi grins, watching the both of their children with the biggest smile she’s ever seen on his face.
“Well,” he smiles, looking over his shoulder at her with a wink. “It was nice while it lasted.”