Remember my Heart - 4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

There was a certain way to go about seeking an audience with Kane no Sato, Gus's uncle, but Dee didn't care. He took a transport straight to the Administration District. The great buildings towered over the rest of the city, rising to within meters of the arching dome overhead. A clever arrangement of buttresses and spires enabled airborne transports to land such that there were several entrances and exits for each building.

Given the balance of power on Mars, each of the founding families effectively owned a section of the administration complex. The Mori Clan, as one of the most powerful, occupied the top dozen floors and halls of the Beauvais Building, a new, state-of-the-art design pioneered by their clan. The Satos, having fallen from prominence, maintained offices toward the bottom of the Imasen Building, an older building that had not survived the years well.

Dee burst from his transport and brushed past a pair of flustered attendants with a fierce scowl. He pulled out his mobile com and called for Sato-sama's direct line. Woe betides the junior executives who answered or tried to stand in Dee's way. Still shouting on the com at Sato-sama's executive officer, Dee shoved aside the personal assistant when the man tried to bar his entry. He slammed his hand down on the entry control panel and strode into Sato-sama's personal office, only to stop cold in the middle of a shouting match between his own father and Gus's uncle.

Both Martians were tall and slim, their long hair braided back into thick queues down their backs. The elegant, intricately styled hair was an enduring tradition among the founding families. One of Dee's sisters had cut hers short like a pixie as an act of rebellion in her teens, and Dee could still hear the screaming and shouting that had resulted. Sato-sama's hair had slightly more gray; Mori-sama carried more weight along his jowls and waist. In violation of all accepted standards of personal space, the two older men stood practically nose to nose.

Dee forgot his anger for a moment in his surprise. "Otou-san?" he blurted. They turned together to stare at him. Dee’s first thought was that Gus looked nothing like his uncle. He quickly reminded himself that Sato-sama was the brother of Gus’s mother. Gus’s father was an Earthling.

He turned back to Sato-sama, shaking his head a little to focus. "I ... I am truly sorry to, uh, interrupt."

"It is fine," sighed Sato-sama. He waved at his assistant in dismissal.

Dee didn't let the silence stretch on too long after the door closed. Straightening his shoulders, he stated, "I wish to marry Gus."

"Out of the question!"

Dee winced at his father’s predictable outburst. He turned his back on his father, knowing that he would have to deal with the consequences of such disrespect later. His attention remained with Sato-sama. The older man looked exhausted, deep creases around his mouth and black smudges under his eyes.

"Please, Sato-sama!" cried Dee. He stepped forward, hands clenched beseechingly as he struggled against building frustration for the desires of his heart. "Please!"

Mori-sama grabbed his son's arm in a vise-like grip, voice hard. "Absolutely not."

"I'm not a child!" Dee snapped, planting his feet in a wide stance to resist his father's greater strength. "I don't care what you say anymore! I did what you asked and put distance between us. I tried dating the people you wanted me to. I did everything you asked and I’m done! I want to be with Gus!" He directed his plea back at Gus's uncle.

"Sato-sama, he almost remembered me." Choking on a suddenly constricted throat, Dee blinked back tears. "Please, I want to court him. I want to make him mine again.”

He gasped as his father’s hand tightened on his arm, stunned into silence as Takehiro stepped forward and shouted, “I warned you, Kane! I’ll ruin you for this!”

"It was your son who broke the agreement!" Sato-sama roared.

"Stop it!" shouted Dee. He sprang between the two men. "I don't know what's going on, and I don't care! I'm here to talk about Gus. Me and Gus."

"Do not speak of him so familiarly," his father scolded, turning away from Sato-sama to scowl at Dee.

"He loves me!" Dee cried. He ignored the flush on his cheeks under two disbelieving and reproving stares, and lifted his chin proudly. "And I love him."

"Gus is lucky to know his own name," said Sato-sama heavily, sighing.

"Yes, but --“

"It's none of your concern."

Dee shrugged off his father's restraining hand, instead following Sato-sama over to the liquor cabinet. "It is my concern. I need to talk to you about Gus. I want to see him, be with him. He’s sick and--"

"I shall not discuss the nature of my nephew's illness with you."

Jerking backward from the unexpected denial, Dee turned to his father once more. Takehiro seemed unusually pensive, but Dee pushed that aside in an effort to engage his father’s support.

"Otou-san," he tried, searching his father’s face. “Papa, this could be my last chance! My only chance to be with him.” He dodged the attempt to herd him from the room.

“What if it was me?” he demanded of his father. “What if I’d been in that car? And my boyfriend was now here, begging to see me. Papa, please. Can you not set aside your anger, just this one time? For me?" He clasped his father's hands in his own, just as he had as a small boy. "He didn’t do anything to you! And I love him, Papa. I love him! Please."

Takehiro halted mid-step, almost stumbling. Pressing a quick kiss to his son's forehead, Takehiro released him. "I did not separate you for that old wound," he said.

Dee frowned at this reference to the cause behind the feud between his family and the Satos. They were getting off the topic.

"Are you sure?" asked Sato-sama, before Dee could interject.

"McKenna's plan was cunning,” Takehiro replied slowly.

“Papa!” Dee objected. “This is not--“

Takehiro cut him off. “I respected that. I’d have hired him on the spot if he wanted a job, but that’s not what he was after. I could not let you be used in such a way," he explained kindly, patting his son’s shoulder.

Dee's brow wrinkled in confusion, something cold roiling in his gut like an overripe fruit souring. "Papa," he said in a small voice. His disbelieving gaze begged his father to tell him that he'd played no part in the accident which had robbed them of so precious and gentle a man as Angus McKenna no Sato, the man Dee had given his heart to.

"He was just using you to get to me!"

"No he wasn't! Just one meeting, between you and Sato-sama, that's all he wanted! No agreements, no contracts, just one face-to-face meeting -- And I agreed!"

“Don’t be so naïve, Daiki! I am trying to do what's best for you!"

"You don't know what's best for me! You never did! Why are you doing this?" He knew the answer, he'd just been told, but Dee couldn't help but ask again. Contrary to his wishes to stay calm, level-headed, and strong, Dee's voice kept cracking and he had to fight back sobs.

This couldn’t be! He had idolized his father as a child. Maybe he hadn’t understood what he did as the head of their clan, but he’d seemed untouchable and awesome in his power. Takehiro was a distant father, stern, but not unloving. Dee knew his father loved him, he wouldn’t have --

No! It was too much. Such a … atrocity would ruin their family. Dee had heard the words integrity and honor too many times in his life to believe his father would do this. It was impossible! It had to be. Oh, God, it had to be!

But Gus’s uncle stood there, so silent and sad, defeated. It would break Gus’s heart to see his uncle like this.

Dee stiffened, straightening his shoulders and wiping his eyes. “I don’t care about what happened in the past,” he stated, shoving the painful conjectures aside. “I just care about Gus!”

“I don’t know what that boy has said to bewitch you, Dee, but he’s just using you. He always has.”

Dee jerked out from under his father’s seeking hand. “No, damn it! Listen to me!”

“Daiki-san,” Sato-sama interjected, drawing Dee’s attention. “I love my nephew, but we were going through a tough time. There wasn’t a lot of money.”

“No! That’s not it!” Dee blinked away the tears on his lashes. “Gus didn’t care about the money. He told me he wished that you’d give up the business.” Sato-sama gaped at him, reaching for the countertop to steady himself, but Dee pressed on. “He was afraid all the stress would kill you. He said that’s why his mom ran away! She told him that she’d wanted to be free. She didn’t want the responsibility. Gus couldn’t understand why you wanted it so much.”

“He would have told you anything --“

“You dare impugn my nephew’s honor?” Sato-sama demanded in a quiet voice. He set down the bottle he’d been about to pour. Tension crackled from the tense line in his shoulders and Dee held his breath.

“Kane, no.” Takehiro had the grace to look embarrassed. “It’s good business sense, didn’t I say that? You should’ve made him your heir.”

“I know,” said Sato-sama and Dee saw a genuine smile through the worry lines around his mouth. “He’s so much like my sister that way, too clever for his own good. I swear I knew nothing of this, Take-san.”

Dee’s mouth fell open. He almost missed his father’s response and wasn’t sure he dared believe his ears. Was his father apologizing?

“I could see why you came to that conclusion,” Sato-sama was saying when Dee tuned back in to the conversation. “What I don’t understand is why you are continuing to punish my nephew for something that I did.”

Takehiro’s voice was hard. “I said my decision had nothing to do with that! My son will believe the best of everyone--“

“Will you not believe your own son? Do you hate me so much?”

“If not to barter a business deal, then why else would he come to speak with me? To arrange a meeting between us?”

Dee cleared his throat. He bowed respectfully to his father and Gus’s uncle. “Otou-san, Sato-sama, the answer is simple. So simple you refuse to accept it, but it’s the truth! You were friends once, like brothers.

“Sato-sama, Gus said that you’d told him you’d give anything to apologize and explain, but that my father refused to see you. Look at you now!” He gestured between the two men, focusing on his father. “That’s all Gus wanted, I swear on it. I swear, Papa. We thought that maybe, if we got you two together, that you’d talk. That’s all.”

“Take-san.” Sato-sama sighed and dropped heavily into a chair, amber liquid sloshing over the rim of the glass in his hand. He raised it to his lips.

Resolve straightened Dee’s spine, though his heart shuddered in fear. He met his father's gaze, hands clenching into fists as he voiced the one option he hadn't yet considered. "I'll take responsibility for him."

Sato-sama coughed as he swallowed too quickly, choking on his drink.

Takehiro flushed darkly and stomped forward. "No! Absolutely not!"

"It's my choice!" Dee challenged him, holding his ground.

"You do this," Takehiro warned, "and you will no longer be my son!"

Dee's mouth fell open as tears sprang to his eyes. He wiped them away with a frustrated seep of his arm, clenching his jaw to stop his lip from trembling. "You're being unreasonable!" he shouted when his voice worked its way past his shock.

"Kane no Sato." Takehiro turned from his son to fix Sato-sama with a burning, demanding gaze. "You will not let this happen."

Sato-sama acknowledged the command with a short, graceful bow of his neck. "Hai, Mori-sama." The smile he gave Dee held no humor, only sadness. “If you adopt him, you cannot marry.”

“I know that. But, Sato-sama, I love him.”

Taking responsibility for someone was not quite adoption, but only lawyers really knew the difference. The complex rules came about from the early days of colonization, when fatalities were as gruesome as they were frequent. Mars was a lifeless, unforgiving world that didn't care if you were young, old, single, or with family. One mistake and lives were lost. Something had to be done with the large number of orphans, and so the Martian government developed a strict, many-tiered adoption system.

At its most fundamental, legal minors were accepted into a home, postponing any debts accrued by their family until their legal majority. Assets were likewise frozen. The adopting family was then held accountable for any debts or criminal activity of the new family member, but they also shared in any generated wealth.

An adoption was irrevocably binding once sanctioned by the courts, with carefully-worded clauses to protect the safety of the adoptees. Those adopted would become as blood relations in the eyes of the law, with all the legal implications that entailed.

As the one who currently had responsibility for Gus, Sato-sama would have to surrender his rights in order for Dee to accept them.

Dee wasn’t above begging. “Can you not see how sick he is? You've obviously not been taking care of him as you should! Living alone, with no one to watch over him --"

"I know perfectly well!" Sato-sama snapped. The glass in his hand cracked against the coffee table as he stood.

Takehiro shifted to stand between his rival and his son. "McKenna-san’s care is none of your concern, Daiki." He almost recoiled from the intense anger thrown back at him.

"Fuck you," said Dee quietly.

In the stunned silence that followed, Sato-sama sighed dispiritedly. “Daiki-san, if a meeting is what you bargained for, then a meeting you got.” He waved between himself and Takehiro. “Your debt is paid. There is nothing further to be gained from this.”

“Only Gus,” he replied stubbornly. He glanced between his father and Gus’s uncle, wondering if he should chance satisfying his curiosity. With both men against him, he really had no hope, but restoring the friendship between their clans had been Gus’s dream. The least he could do was to try.

“What did you do, Sato-sama? What happened between you and my father?”

“Kane.” Dee looked back at his father, surprised by the warning tone.

Sato-sama answered without looking at him, “The damage is done, Take-san.” He picked up his glass and downed the remaining contents, remaining still for a long moment as he stared at a view of the Riverwalk shown on the wall screen

It was Takehiro who sighed and said, “I was to marry Aimi no Sato and merge our two companies.”

“Gus’s mother?” Dee asked carefully.

“Yes.”

“My sister didn’t want the company,” Sato-sama explained. “She thought that she could get rid of it by marrying my best friend. We would then merge and run our businesses together.”

“She was a most exquisite woman,” Takehiro admitted.

Dee stared at his father, but he didn’t have time to wonder at the tone because Sato-sama was speaking again.

“But Aimi changed her mind. She begged me for help getting off-world.”

“On the eve of our wedding!” Takehiro crossed his arms over his chest as if to hold back the hurt and anger he obviously still felt.

Content to be forgotten for the moment, Dee watched and listened. So this, then, was the dirty secret Gus had hinted at as the source of the schism between their families.

“You broke her heart!” Sato-sama accused, facing his rival squarely as pain-filled anger suffused his voice. “Never once did you try to court her or even befriend her.”

“It was a business arrangement.”

“She loved you!”

“She was my sister!” Takehiro shook his head. “You were family, I’d always thought of you so: you my brother and Aimi my sister. How could she believe I’d bed her?”

“Because she loved you, you baka yaro! You could have talked to her. I told you to speak with her, but all you could focus on -- all you’ve ever wanted -- is the company!”

“So you betrayed me.”

“I did what I had to do to ensure my beloved sister’s happiness. You didn’t have to call off the merger; that was just your stupid pride talking.”

“And you showed me your family has no honor.”

Dee gasped as his father’s words filled the room with a dull thud. The heads of the Sato and Mori clans glared at each other. The apology had been given and denied and Dee knew that Gus had been right.

“Papa,” he said, drawing both men’s attention. “You’ve carried your anger too far. Wouldn’t you want me to act as Sato-sama did for my sisters? Would you not do the same if it had been your sister?”

Takehiro’s mouth twisted. “You McKenna’s errand boy now? He send you here to spout such nonsense?”

“Take-san!”

“A man’s word is his bond!” Takehiro snarled, rounding on Sato-sama. “I had the pledge of your clan! I told you then you were finished. I’m not going to stop now!”

“My sister is dead, you bastard! Let her spirit rest.”

Tentatively, Dee moved to his father’s side and touched his arm. “Papa, can you not forgive her? You both found happiness, right?”

“That’d be just what her brat would want, isn’t it?”

Sato-sama’s hands clenched at his sides, jaw thrusting forward as his eyes narrowed.

“Yes, Papa!” Dee stepped forward quickly. He stared up at his father, willing him to believe the truth and to understand. “All he wanted was to convey his mother’s apology, to mend the breach in our families. Or at least to try. I swear, Papa.”

Takehiro set both hands on his son’s shoulders and smiled slightly. “I know that’s what you believe, Dee.”

“Papa.” Dee wiped away more tears, numb with the sense of failure. Pulling away, he sank down into the plush seat in front of Sato-sama’s desk. Bringing his knees up, he rested his cheek there so that he faced away from the two men still arguing in the middle of the room.

“Is this what you’ve come to now?” Sata-sama hissed. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Take-san!”

“How dare you take that tone with me, after all you’ve done!”

“Enough, Take-san.” Sato’s voice rose and Dee looked back over. “You hear the truth and you still won’t believe. I will not be your whipping boy any longer.”

“I should have known your promises were worthless,” Takehiro spat.

Dee jumped to his feet as Sato-sama struck, knocking Takehiro back on his ass. Takehiro lifted a hand to his jaw, staring back at his assailant in shock.

“I kept my promise for three years, Take.” Sato-sama’s voice quivered for a moment before steadying. “I did everything in my power to do as you asked -- no, demanded. I was happy to do so, because Gus didn’t remember and I wanted to spare him what pain I could. And all the while, it was you who couldn’t control your son!”

“I’ll have your company and sell it off piece by piece!” Takehiro roared as he got to his feet.

But Sato-sama only turned his head. “Fine,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to fight you anymore. Do what you wish.”

“Papa, you cannot mean this!” Dee cried. “What about Gus? Without his family’s support, he’ll die!” He ran to Gus’s uncle. “Sato-sama, you cannot let him do this!” Dee broke off when he saw tears in the older man’s eyes.

“There’s nothing you can do,” said Sato-sama, blindly patting Dee’s shoulder. “Gus is already dying.” Without looking at either of his visitors, he walked away.