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"Do you think I'm grown up enough to wear this?" Relena asked, showing off a large gem pendant."
"I think blue's more your color,"
"Clara said red brings out my eyes,"
"Really?" Tohma asked, very subdued before chuckling, "I guess I'm not much of a fashionista."
Relena removed the gem stone, and set it down, "I think your taste is fine."
"Don't give me too much credit." Tohma said.
The soft sounds of Relena fussing about the jewelry box was the only noise.
"It's fun having you around more often," Relena said, "It gets boring here without you."
"I'm sorry I left you here all alone so often. I like being here more often too." He expected Relena to argue, that she wasn't all alone. That she had dad, and grandmother and the staff.
"No, you and Gaomon were busy doing important stuff!"
"...right," Tohma said, "Still I'm sorry."
By all accounts, he and Relena should have hated each other.
Half-siblings. The bastard and the legitimate child.
Their grandmother's racism vs. her ableism in human form.
But really perhaps that was why, from day one, Tohma had latched onto Relena. The only light in his cold world. Someone who hadn't yet learned she was his rival in the game of inheritance and status.
In the end, neither really cared about the estate or the titles. Because neither had ever found comfort in its hatred of them for who they were.
"It's too bad Gaomon isn't here." Relena asked.
"Yeah, it is..." Tohma agreed, and found his eyes drawn out the window to the clear blue midday sky.
"I'm sure he's doing fine though." Tohma added a bit hurridly.
"What about this one?" Relena asked, presenting a light blue sapphire necklace. The sapphire was a fair bit smaller, but inlaid into a larger gold pendant.
It did suit her, but...
"...that was your mother's wasn't it?" Tohma said after staring at it for a few seconds.
Relena studied it for a bit, "Was it? I wouldn't know."
"I think so... I think she wore that one pretty often."
Relena studied herself in the mirror, "I see."
Relena's mother dying in childbirth, meant that she had no mother to remember. In fact, Tohma was quite certain Relena knew more about his mother than she did about her own. She'd always liked Tohma's stories of growing up in Japan, and naturally his mother had featured in those. It had almost been their little secret.
"You don't see your mom's side of the family very often do you?" Tohma said.
"I don't see anyone very often," Relena pointed out, "I saw my aunt a few months ago though. She brought me a present... she didn't stay long though."
"It's nice she came for a visit though."
"I guess," Relena said, "She said I looked a lot like mother..."
"Is that a bad thing?" Tohma asked.
"I don't know. I think it made her sad."
Relena's mother's marriage to their father had been one of convenience, arranged by their grandmother. Relena's mother, while never cruel to Tohma, had never exactly been kind either. They'd mostly just held each other at a distance for the vanishingly brief period they had known each other.
With age, Tohma had come to recognize that she likely saw him as a rival to her unborn child. The child his grandmother didn't want to inherit the family line, but the one his father still had some degree of affection for. His father's bastard child that was probably going to be shipped off to boarding school the minute he was old enough.
He probably would have if it wasn't for Relena being deemed unfit.
And if he had, would he and Relena ever have gotten so close? Would he have been less stressed? Would he have gone to college young? Would he ever have met Gaomon?
Digimon were drawn towards strong emotions. Gaomon had come to him during one of the scariest times of his life.
Relena was hospitalized and with the way father rarely came home, Tohma could tell it wasn't looking good.
His grandmother insisted he carry on like normal.
He tried. He tried throwing himself into his studies in hopes of maybe being able to be useful some way. A proper heir. A doctor. Anything but his useless, disgraceful self.
Gaomon had changed his life in more ways then one. By simply being loyal to him, he had someone to trust in his word of backstabbing relatives and two faced government officials.
Someone to remind him that this world of pragmatic agreements and superficial alliances his father had brought him into was not all there was to bonds. That this world was worth fighting to keep Relena in.
Gaomon got him recruited to a Japanese government agency where he was able to freely pursue a medical degree all before the age of 13.
Where the private tutors his grandmother had insisted upon bore him fruit.
Relena took the necklace off, and continued digging.
"Oh look!" Relena said, turning quickly to face him. It was a necklace, in the shape of a dog. Nothing fancy, no gemstones, not even anything fake. It was a silver color, but Tohma knew it wasn't.
"Isn't it cute!"
Tohma remembered that. It was his christmas gift to her when she was two. His second Christmas with the Norstein family. The first after Gaomon.
He'd bought it after an outing with Yoshino, not long after he joined DATS.
Yoshino had pointed it out to him.
He’d bought it on impulse.
His grandmother had looked at it with disdain. Relena had thought the "puppy" was cute for a few minutes but hadn't been particularly interested after, she was still a toddler. But somehow, the necklace was never thrown out.
"I'm going to wear this!" Relena said firmly.
"Are you sure?"
Relena nodded, "It looks like Gaomon!"
"But..." Tohma started, but the smile on Relena's face was impossible to argue with, "You're right, it does. It suits you too."