a/n: Depressing, AU-ish future-fic of where Éclair might be, someday. There are just too many ways to imagine her in the future, but, God, I love them all. This prompt had to be written for her.

I tried out a new style of writing, trying to elimate 'be' and to 'show, not tell', with more dialogue. 'Course, I couldn't resist indulging in my beloved, melodramatic bits and pieces. I guess it's good practice?

They feel like the cheek of a baby, better than velvet or even kisses. Maybe that's why she kept them on the table. A reminder of what could have, might have, been. She's stroked them ever-so-gently for what feels like hours on hours. At any rate, it was midnight and now it's dawn.

She curls up in her housecoat and lies her head in her hands. No tears. None.

"Éclair," he says, exasperated with a touch of still-angry. She stiffens.

"I didn't realize you were there." No tears in her voice, none.

"We can work this out," he says. He lies.

"No," she replies sharply, raising her head. Her eyes are the bluest kind of blue. Genetics gifted her, love gave her nothing (nothing that she didn't deserve). "No, we can't work this out."

Then: "Get out of here."

Silence sets in so still that she can hear his breath catch. She stays rigid as a statue, a statue of some haughty beauty whose name no one cares to remember.

"We're not separating."

He stands in the doorway in his pajamas, pants loose around his waist, shirt tight around muscles and tone that were paid for with hours at the gym, displayed at yachting trips and balls alike. He doesn't wear a housecoat, because it's summer and not all that cold. The Marseille breeze warms the room from the open window, setting a deceptively peaceful tone.

"No, we are not separating. We're divorcing. That's it. That's all." In a business-like motion, she slips a wedding band off of her finger and onto the table. It clinks a little against the wood.

He gawks at her. He stares into her eyes, but they're as dead as deep water, dead serious, steady as the gaze of the accusing dead. He looks away and runs a hand through tousled, sunned-blond hair.

"It's our fifth year anniversary. We're not even old enough to be sick of each other."

"And I want to divorce you. There is no question about it. That is what I want to do, and there is no way you can keep me in a marriage that I don't want."

"What… what the fuck?"

"You've never been particularly eloquent," she says, pursing her lips into a cat's frown. "I think that's what I like about you."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"I wouldn't have wanted the baby to hear that kind of language, anyway."

"There was never any baby!" he says, almost frantically, not understanding.

"Exactly," she replies. "This is my chateau – will you kindly, as you would put it, get the fuck out?"

He runs his hand through his hair, still not believing. "Éclair," he tries again, slipping into a soft, smooth, soothing voice, "After last night? After we got married? You can't just tell me to leave without letting me try and work it out. We're married, Éclair. Married. I said I loved you, and you said you loved me, and I thought that meant we were going somewhere. And now?"

" Last night you admitted that you lied to me. You can't begin to understand how much I wanted, how stupid I feel. How stupid I am, to believe someone as flimsy and dishonorable as you. We have all the fucking money in the world, and you lied and said, yes, I could have a baby. Now? I don't. You don't want one. You want me and my money and nothing but. You don't care if I'm happy or not."

"Yeah, well, it's not like you care much more about me."

She stares at him, but it's like she sees nothing. "No," she says, telling the truth like being broken out of a trance, "No, I never did. Love you. Or care about you."

He grows angrier. "No, you never fucking did."

She turns back to the lilies and touches them softly, while his rage heightens and heightens and peaks and then stumbles and falls at her nonchalance.

"You," he says, calmly but with a certain amount of relish, "Are a fucking, ice-cold bitch. I always wanted to tell you that."

She ignores him. There are some things that hurt to hear, and among them is the truth.

He goes into his room to pack his things. There are battles to come, but only for things, things, money, and more things. She will want them then (she will want to win) but now all she wants is quiet. She fingers the lilies even as he is long-gone, closing her eyes and imagining a baby with lilly-soft cheeks.

Finally, when she gets hungry enough that she must leave melancholy for practicality, she buries her nose in the lilies and breathes in.

They smell like a room she visited once and a dream she once had, and she still recalls his name – the kanji, just faintly, the pronunciation ringing clear – but it is all so blurry and far away from where she is now. The smell brings it closer than it will ever be, aids her in memory.

She rises from her chair. Before she eats, she opens the windows and feels the Marseille breeze and realizes that from now on, Marseille beaches are going to smell of disappointment the same way lilies smell of fantasy. She takes a long breath of it, and then she lifts the pot of lilies (sent from her mother) and dumps them out the window, onto the ground.

She closes the window tight and hopes that the rain will wash the lilies away before she has to see them lying limp and dying under the sill.