_Faithfully_

~Oneshot~

-Disclaimer: If I owned Shaman King, I wouldn't be writing this.

-Rating: K+

-Genre(s): Hurt/Comfort, Family.

-Pairing(s): RenxJeanne with the appearance of Men.

-Summary: Ironic title.

-Music: Faithfully (Glee Cast Version).

A/N: So, I have finally decided to get out of the safe bubble that is fluff and write this piece of (sort of) Angst. Very different from what I used to write, but I actually kind of enjoyed it. This is also my first AU, by the way.

Also, this is a semi-songfic based on Journey's song "Faithfully" but the version used in the story is Glee Cast Version sung by Lea Michele and Cory Monteith. I do NOT own the song.

When he was tightening his tie, he took a glance at his phone and saw a new message.

You left early. How are you?

Familiar cheerful words.

I'm okay. He replied.

A minute later.

Then that's good. Miss you. See you soon :D

When he left the house, she was standing by the door frame holding her son. The little boy strikingly resembled him, but his red eyes were just as cold as his mother's when she wished him a good day.

As he drove away, he caught a glimpse of her face. Emotionless, as usual.

Where are you? The screen flashed 3 words.

I'm coming. He reached out to it, typing the words with calloused fingers after a day at work.

Same place. Quick replying, as usual.

He cracked the door open, entering the living room in silence. She was sitting on the couch, playing with the little boy and smiling. The smile disappeared the moment she saw his face. Wordlessly, she went to the closet, took out a shirt and told him to change.

She nodded when he said he would have a business meeting that night.

When the door was closed behind him, he could see her humming a melody with her son. The melody echoed across the walls, clear, empty, broken.

The lights were too bright. Still, they made him feel good. Or warm. Or filled his emptiness just a bit.

He looked down at the sleeping lump on the bed, beside him. Sighing, he sat up and got dressed.

The cold air made him shiver. It was already around midnight. Fingers putting loosely on the steering wheel, he turned on the radio.

"Through space and time

Always another show

Wonderin' where I am, lost without you"

The soft soprano echoed ever so silently in the deserted air. The smell of alcohol filled his mind. It all seemed like a dream. The sound, the smell, and the lights too bright...

It was an accident.

A broken limb was added to his hangover.

He opened his eyes to see no particular color.

All so... white.

Still dizzy, he struggled to sit up, feeling a thin blanket falling off his torso.

He was startled to find the silver hair sprawling on the mattress beside him. She must have been sitting beside the bed when she fell asleep, her hand still holding his. He shifted his hand to release it from her grip, and she wakes up, asking him how he felt.

He just nodded. It wasn't okay at all to have one leg stilled and useless, but he could put up with it for now. The door swiftly slipped open, and a little boy stepped silently into the room, pulling the hem of his mother's dress. She smiled at him sweetly and led him outside.

Ren fell back onto his pillow with a huff. The little boy didn't even bother to look at him.

It was an arranged marriage. She was a foreigner, daughter of some rich family. She had been sixteen when being married to him in a short, simple wedding. He had been twenty at the time and rebellious. He had feelings for someone else and he hated her. It was a simple theory. He was forced to marry someone he hadn't loved, so he hated her.

He didn't even know how he had a son. All he could remember was that he had been drunk, and the next thing he knew, there was a reflection of him with her eyes and her hair playing around in his house.

He had expected her to hit him and cry her eyes out. But she never did. He came home every night, hair mussed and shirt ruffled, drunk and smelled, to find his cold meal on the dining table, his bed prepared and a boy never looking at him.

He set the chopsticks on his emptied plate and she took the tray away from him. He watched her walking ever so gracefully out of the room, as the little boy silently entered the room and sat on the edge of his bed.

He wanted to run his fingers in the boy's hair like he had seen Yoh did several times with his son. But it seemed like they were miles apart, like there was an abyss, so deep he couldn't possibly see the bottom, between them. She brought him the pills, and he watched the boy falling into her arms, muttering Mom and smiling. At that instant, it seemed like it was not only his leg that hurt.

She pulled the covers neatly over his body. He never wondered how she knew all of this, because she was born in nobility. She wasn't supposed to know how to cook, she wasn't supposed to know how to set his bed. She wasn't supposed to lose her virginity to a drunkenly abusive husband and give birth to the child he never cared about. She wasn't supposed to be here, at all.

She asked him if he needed anything else.

Wordlessly, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist. He needed her to stay.

Much to his relief, the injury didn't last too long. After about a month and a half, he was able to get in that car and drive to work again.

The texts were back. This time, he didn't answer.

He came home to find the house completely quiet, as usual.

There was a note left on the dining table, beside his meal.

He slumped in the white leather couch, staring at the paper in his hand. She had gone back to France for a family meeting. Sometimes, he just forgot. He forgot that she had had a life before she met him. That she had been her family's little princess, lively and carefree and beautiful. That her life would have been very different if she hadn't been married to him, to this very conservative family that forced her to just stay home and take care of the child.

He slept on the couch that night. He couldn't bring himself to his bed. It would be cold anyway, now that he wasn't drunk, and she wasn't there.

The house is empty.

For the first time, he was aware of that fact.

He was familiar with the silence. But during his recovery, there had always been the small rustles of her dress and the little crunches of the card boards as she stepped up and down the stairs. Silently, patiently. They reminded him that she was there, that she was always there.

He fell asleep on that couch again. In his dream, he vaguely felt something very soft and warm and light-colored snuggling close to him.

He ran his fingers lightly in his son's soft hair after waking up and finding the boy sound asleep next to him. He remembered how happy his family had been the day Men was born. They had the heir. He remembered her face, strained with tears and sweats, glowing with the happiness he hadn't been able to recognize. As though she had been truly happy to have that child with him.

And now, looking down at his son's sleeping form, he couldn't bring himself to think that this beautiful being was a mistake.

He had Yoh and Horohoro come over one night. They knew about the situation of his marriage, but the reason they were his friends was that they never said much about it.

It's not cool, man. Horo grunted, putting down his cards.

Ren wondered if he was talking about him losing again or her.

I don't think you're doing right. Yoh said calmly, putting his cards down also. I mean, I know about arranged marriage.

But things weren't difficult for him at all. His fiancee had been with him ever since he had been ten years old.

He said as much to him and added one more thing. He didn't love her.

Don't be so sure about that. Yoh replied simply, flipping his wallet open to pay for the gamble.

Ren caught a glimpse of a picture of Anna and Hana in his wallet. Laid-back idiot that he was, Yoh just shrugged with a goofy grin on his face.

Ren broke up with his affair.

All in a text message. One that was never replied.

It ended so simply, so fast. As if it was nothing at all. The love he had been fighting for for five years. The love that had always left him empty inside.

He was putting on his tie when she came in and asked to help him.

When she was done fixing his collar, she suddenly tugged on the tie and put a quick kiss on the corner of his lips.

Silently as ever, she walked off.

_END_

A/N: So, thanks for reading to this point. I have found many stories that portrayed Ren and Jeanne in an arranged relationship, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Just in another direction.

I couldn't help but think this is the longest I've ever written, of all my oneshots and chapters. I also have a feeling that it ended quite weak. Please review and tell me your much appreciated opinion!