Chapter Text
In the weeks following that final battle, there was a lot that needed to be addressed. Buildings that needed repair, bodies that needed to be recovered, and a team that required a lot of reflection over the cataclysmic events set into motion only over a week and a half.
And for once, Ichigo could really breathe. She visited Masaya in the hospital almost every day, and although it reminded her of a time past in which she’d see him nearly every day after school – chiming laughter and carefree smiles in the warm light of the evenings – she forced herself to do the right thing. He tried to assure her that it wasn’t her fault. She brought him cakes from the café every day anyway.
Still, when she left his bedside just as the orange, summer sun began to disappear over the city skyline, and the soft angles of his face were backlit in the confines of his hospital room, there were split seconds when she swore she could see Deep Blue’s face in the reflection of the window. She could hear him in the rumbling echoes of his voice down the hospital corridor when he said goodbye. In the way his dark hair looked like clear midnight against the white, sterile sheets. Wrapping her arms painted with healing scrapes and cuts around herself, she pretended not to notice and kept walking home.
Things slowed down at the café. Quiche pestered her day in and day out, but there was a quiet acceptance of normalcy between them. He didn’t treat her differently in the wake of her defeat of Deep Blue, and truthfully, that made her feel better. She was still the same. He still loved her just the same.
Zakuro left for about a week to go to America and tie up some loose ends with one of her modeling contracts. Mint followed, naturally, and despite the anxiety over losing two members of Tokyo Mew Mew, even for just a week, nothing happened. There were no Chimera attacks, no more remnants of Deep Blue's energy. They all took the time to fall back into the routine of living regular lives.
At the end of her shift, she set the box of cakes down into the grass of the hill beside the café and watched the wind dance over the surface of the lake. A few children were playing catch nearby, and she smiled. Ichigo let herself lay down into the green field that tickled her skin and stared up at the clouds, relishing a moment’s peace.
A shadow obscured her vision, and she let a smile appear on her face. Quiche sat down next to her dressed in a black tee and black shorts and placed his arm just behind her back. Their legs just barely touched, but Ichigo didn’t feel the urge to pull away. Not after everything they’d been through, anyway.
“It’s time for us to go back home,” he said, his voice soft. Ichigo let the breeze twist through her loose hair.
“It feels like you just got here.”
A chuckle rumbled in Quiche’s chest.
“Sorry, Kitten, but the people of Cyniclon need us. Now more than ever.”
The two sat and stared out at the way the sun twinkled out on the water’s surface. A family of ducks swam by, and the laughter of the children chimed in the air.
Pensively, Ichigo turned to look at Quiche. There was a pink scar running across his nose. A reminder of the final confrontation. Deep in her heart, she knew that there was only one path for her to take, and so she let out a breath and remembered her courage as Earth’s guardian.
“I talked to the Mews, and we decided we want to go with you. We want to help in any way that we can,” she spoke with the determination of a lifelong hero. Quiche glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. Amber met brown for just a moment, and then he looked back at the lake.
“You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“I don’t care.”
The warm summer wind ruffled her pink skirt, but she paid it no mind as she continued to look to Quiche expectantly. He ran a conflicted hand through his hair, letting his dark green locks slip through his pale, dexterous fingers, then glanced at her once more.
“It’s going to be a danger that you’re entirely unaccustomed to. Battles are not fought with weapons, but with words and underhanded gestures. You’ll need to watch your back every step of the way.”
“I had to learn how to fight as Mew Ichigo. I’ll learn how to deal with the new battlefield.”
Quiche ran a hand through his hair with a smile. One that said he wanted to argue with her more and find a way to convince her to stay on Earth but knew that Ichigo was stubborn once she’d made up her mind. He was right, too. She wasn’t going to compromise.
“However, before we go, I think we need to talk about something that Eronye said during the final fight,” Ichigo said. An air of mellow seriousness fell over them. The elephant in the room that they’d been tip-toeing around for the past few weeks.
“Right. My… marriage situation,” Quiche grumbled. Ichigo watched the sour expression that flashed across his face.
“I’ve had time to think about it, obviously, so I’m not really mad anymore, but I do want to know what that meant.”
“No, I understand. It was… wrong of me to keep that to myself. I was avoiding the problem if I'm being honest. It's not something I'm happy about if you couldn't tell. It's arranged."
“To who?” Ichigo asked, tilting her head to the side. He was averting his gaze, brows furrowed, and jaw clenched.
“The… princess of Cyniclon.”
Awesome. A princess.
“Um. Wow,” she said awkwardly, not knowing how to respond without insecurity seeping into her words. Really. Quiche saw something in her that was better than a princess. A literal, royal princess. She knew he had a few screws loose, but this was a bit much.
“Yeah, it’s…” he began, “a highly politicized marriage.”
Quiche picked at the grass underneath his feet. His face said it all. It was something he’d been avoiding for the entire time he was on Earth.
“The goal was to mend some tension between Deep Blue loyalists and those who stopped worshipping him when we returned to Cyniclon years ago. I was… pretty unhappy with it. Started to antagonize the king more than I should have. I think he began to feel like the pros started to outweigh the cons on getting rid of me entirely. That’s when the assassinations started. It was hard to publicly call things off when the princess was still invested in marrying me, so I guess he chose the underhanded route.”
Ichigo pursed her lips. It was definitely a lot to take in. To think that Quiche could be engaged to a princess, but also that it was something he wanted out from so badly that he'd gone against the king of his entire planet. Talk about stubborn.
“What’s the princess… um… like?” Ichigo said lamely. Quiche’s breath caught in his throat almost like a whine. Like the thought of even talking about her made him uncomfortable. The Mew couldn’t help but flush at the conversation. There was no real reason for her to be interested in the princess, yet here she was, asking questions. ‘Ever the curious cat,’ she could almost see behind his eyes.
“She’s… possessive. It’s hard to talk about, but the gist of it is that despite being betrothed to her, I wasn’t… faithful per se. Which isn’t completely uncommon for arranged marriages like this, but still frowned upon.”
Ichigo fought the urge to grimace at his confession. Quiche being a player made sense given his demeanor, but it didn’t feel any better to swallow the honest truth. So, he’d had some… physical relationships. Did it count as cheating if it was arranged?
This wasn’t getting any easier.
“I want to make it clear that this only began after I started to give up hope of hearing from you ever again. After three years of waiting, I thought I got the message that there was no redemption for me in your eyes. When we became betrothed a few months ago, I began to do it more. It wasn’t… healthy, though. Caused a lot of difficult relationships. Not just with the princess, either.
The minute I found out that an expedition was being sent to Earth, however, that all stopped. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Nobody could ever be you. We have a tradition in our culture that allows for people to leave an arranged marriage should they desire a love match. It’s not typical that lords will go this route as marrying helps to consolidate wealth and power, but it is part of our culture. Marrying for love was one of the actual freedoms we had on such a desolate planet. I was under a lot of pressure due to the nature of a royal engagement, but if the news became public that I’d found a love match and was still forced into this marriage, press would be pretty bad for the royal family.”
For a moment, Ichigo’s heart skipped a beat in her chest. He’d waited for so long even in the face of an arranged marriage with a princess, just because he was holding out on the hope that he’d be able to be with her? It was equal parts flattering and overwhelming. The idea of marrying Quiche was… inconceivable to the Mew.
“Um, I’m sorry about that. I just don’t know if I’m, um –”
“Calm down, Kitten,” he chuckled, placing an arm behind her, “I’m not asking you to marry me.”
The blush on Ichigo’s cheeks spread to the tips of her ears.
“Of course not! I didn’t think that at all! That would be ridiculous!”
Quiche eyed her knowingly. Ichigo flushed a darker shade of red under his gaze.
“However, if you are willing to do anything to help us back on Cyniclon, I do have an idea of how only you can help.”
Ichigo raised an eyebrow. It was true that she was willing to do anything to help them gain stability on their planet despite politics being utterly foreign to her.
“What can I do?”
Quiche brought his hand up to grab the tip of her chin. Ichigo's eyes widened in response.
“Pretend to be my lover.”
The shocked Mew scrambled backward and covered her burning cheeks with her hands. Quiche cackled at her response, taking a quick glance around the park.
“Ears, Kitten.”
Ichigo flexed her ears to find the muscles twitching atop her head. Naturally, the flustered girl covered the fuzzy appendages with a huff and did her best to twist her tail close to her body.
“You have to be kidding me!” Ichigo hissed, kicking him in the shin. Quiche yelped and held his leg to which Ichigo grinned in satisfaction. Glaring at her from the corner of his eye, Quiche propped himself up again, although a little further from her range, this time.
“It’s no news that I love to tease you, but this time I’m actually serious,” he responded while rubbing his leg. "It's not like I'm going to propose to you, but I do need a way to get out of this arranged marriage. If you pretend to be my lover for however long it takes us to fix things on Cyniclon, then there’s no way they can force me to marry her without some fatal backlash.”
Ichigo tried to let herself calm down enough to consider his words. If it wasn’t real, then all she needed to do was act in public. It’s not like they would be doing anything crazy in front of other people. Maybe hold hands at the most?
Although, knowing Quiche, holding hands wouldn’t even be considered as PDA.
And he was right that she wanted to help in any way she could. Getting Quiche out of an arranged marriage was definitely important if the princess was part of the Deep Blue loyalists. There was also that little flicker of jealousy that sprang up in her heart whenever she thought about Quiche getting married. That feeling was becoming a lot more common when watching him around other girls.
Pretending to be Quiche’s… girlfriend would probably make that feeling a whole lot worse. But maybe the gamble was worth it.
“I guess you have a point… but we need to establish boundaries! You can’t just kiss me all of a sudden in public situations, because knowing you, you would do that,” Ichigo glared.
Quiche shrugged with a smirk. “Guilty as charged. We’ll have plenty of time to discuss logistics before we go, but just to confirm, that’s a yes?”
Ichigo studied his confident smirk, sparkling golden eyes, and sharp cheekbones. He looked healthier than he did those few days before their final encounter with Deep Blue. The stress that settled in the dark circles beneath his eyes a distant memory. In their place were bright, hopeful eyes. Eyes that wanted something more with her. Eyes that knew she was falling for him.
And so, Ichigo let the guard down around her heart if only for a moment, and let herself accept Quiche’s advances more than she’d ever expected herself to. Pretend? Maybe. But dangerous? Definitely.
Curiosity absolutely killed the cat. But staring at Quiche’s golden irises under the steadily setting light of the summer’s sun reminded her of the second, much more important piece of the saying.
Satisfaction brought it back.
Ichigo smiled, stood up, and held a single hand out to Quiche.
“It’s a yes.”