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[Keiko is, certainly. But Rosalind isn't so certain about Kurama. Oh, he's hurting, no doubt about that, and she feels for him, she really does. But he'd gone into this fling with Yusuke knowing precisely what such a relationship might mean. This wasn't a nasty shock, not to him, not truly, because she knows for a fact he'd spent ages agonizing over the decision for just this reason.]

I'm hardly limited to one or two people.

[There's no pity in her expression, but her eyes are softer than she usually allows them.]

Make no mistake: I hardly think you're blameless. Nor is Kurama. But that doesn't mean I can't, or don't, sympathize with you as well.

... your food's almost done.

[Yusuke mutters, his head down. The line of his back is curved and tense, but somehow there's something... lighter about him. Not softer, not more relaxed, but more pliant. Like metal shifting and bending beneath steady pressure.]

You wanna take a seat and I'll bring it out to you?

All right.

[She doesn't press. Either he'll talk to her or he won't, but at least he knows the offer is there. She'll follow his lead from now on, and to that end, Rosalind settles in, sitting at the table, one leg crossed gracefully over the other.]

What is it you've made for me, precisely?

Gyudon. Basically beef and onions served over rice with some scallions and other crap.

[WHAT AN APPETIZING DESCRIPTION. It smells good, however, and looks just as nice when he eventually comes wandering out with it held carefully in both hands and sets it down in front of her. Fluffy white rice and juicy simmered beef mixed with onions and layered with scallions, red ginger, and a carefully poached egg: altogether, it's a simple but colorful and tasty-looking dish, and Yusuke, in spite of everything else that's going on with him, seems satisfied with his handiwork.]

There we go. Lemme know what you think.

[And with that, he slouches down into the chair across from her, crossing his legs at the ankles and watching her as she takes her first bite.]

[It smells fantastic, but it tastes even better: there's nothing too spicy for her English tongue, and Rosalind savors the rice and beef mixing together. It's far better than anything she can make, and it's hard not to simply dig in, but she was raised far better than that.]

It's wonderful, Yusuke.

[She offers him a slight smile.]

There's, ah, always more egg in Japanese meals than I expect. Which is no bad thing, but we don't typically have eggs anywhere but breakfast in England. I quite like it.

[Yusuke, she says. Not Urameshi. Yusuke opts not to point it out, since he doesn't particularly care which name she calls him, but the transition doesn't go unnoticed; in fact, it makes him smirk a little bit, as does the compliment, and slowly, he finds himself thawing as he warms to the easy subject of their respective native cuisines.]

Oh yeah? I dunno if I've ever even had English food before. What is it, fish and chips and spotted dick?

[He snickers. Spotted dick. He doesn't even know what spotted dick is, he just knows it has a hilarious name and really, he's content to let that be the extent of his understanding of it.]

[She gives him the flattest of looks. Don't start, Yusuke.]

It's pudding.

[Not that it will help matters at all, but at least he ought to know.]

As for fish and chips: that's rather more street food than I'm usually inclined to, but there's nothing wrong with it on occasion. If you want real English fare, you ought to get Robert to make you a pork pie.

[Pudding? Well, that just raised more questions than it gave answers. Why would pudding be given a name like that? ...

Yusuke grimaces at her suggestion. Oh. That's why. Because the English are fucking weird.]

No offense, but that sounds rank as hell.

It's pork and potatoes and vegetables, precisely what's rank about that?

Wait, so it's -

[Yusuke blinks, then laughs, scratching the side of his neck sheepishly as he says:]

My bad. I was picturing a normal pie with dead pig in it.

Oh, good lord.

[She supposes she can't blame him, and it's not as if she knows anything about Japanese cuisine, but still.]

Meat pies are a staple of my country. I used to subsist on them when I was seventeen.

[Strange how he doesn't have to wonder what she was like at that age when he's already seen it for himself - or, at the very least, a snapshot of it. Yusuke mulls over this for a second before he replies.]

Did you buy them, or did your folks make 'em for you?

[He doesn't suppose she made them herself. She said she wasn't much of a cook.]

[She has rather an odd reaction, then: Rosalind stares for a split second, her eyes wide, before huffing a wry little laugh.]

Lord and Lady Lutece never stepped foot into a kitchen in all their lives, except perhaps to order the servants around. I doubt either of them even knew how to boil water.

[Mm. Rosalind takes another bite, buying herself a moment as she debates internally. But it doesn't take long for her to come to a resolution, and she soon adds:]

No, I, ah . . . I'd been disowned. At that point. Hence my buying street food.

[Oh. Shit. Way to step in it, Urameshi.]

...

Tsh. Their loss, right?

[He drawls, dismissive in a way that's clearly intended to express disdain for her parents rather than for her or whatever situation they'd left her in. That seems like the safest thing to say to her on this subject: it isn't pitying, it doesn't make him sound like he's implicitly pressuring her to give him any details, and it's the truth. He doesn't know what happened, but he does know that Lord and Lady Lutece got the short end of the deal.]

Yes, I rather think so.

[She smiles, and it's odd, isn't it, how much she resembles her student in that moment: it's the same wry sort of smirk he'd put on when she'd asked after him. It's not happy, precisely. It's bitter and angry and triumphant, all at once, and it only lasts for a few seconds.]

And I gained something far better than some inbred dullard of a husband.

Was that the bottom line? Get hitched or get lost?

[All right, so he'd already resolved not to pry, but. . . he recognizes that vehement sense of victory on her face: it's a look that says, to him, look where I got me; look how I survived and came out on top in spite of you. He recognizes it because he's often found himself feeling similarly, and so it's difficult not for him not to be curious about the circumstances that led her to wear those emotions on her face. Besides, it's natural to want to learn more about the people you care about, right?]

More or less.

[It's a difficult subject, but she wouldn't have brought it up unless she'd been prepared to speak on it. Rosalind pokes around her food for a moment, certain to get a bit of egg alongside the beef and rice for her next bite, before speaking again.]

I'd been rejecting potential matches since I was . . . oh, thirteen or so. My mother debuted me early-- that is, she began presenting me for engagement then. She hoped to utilize my intelligence, because I was already bright enough to master all the little accomplishments the ideal lady ought to. I could sing and play piano, I spoke French, I could paint and sew and even dance . . . and at thirteen, I was still eager to please her.

No one was particularly interested. I was still a child; I think she hoped someone would want me for my potential and my lineage. And then by the time the next season rolled around, I was already in university. I attended all the dances and parties on break, but while I was, ah, physically acceptable, I'd grown old enough to become disillusioned with the idea of a husband who wanted not me, but simply a woman to slot into a role he'd already imagined.

At seventeen, I graduated. My mother, up until then, had treated university as an indulgence. But when I informed her I had no intention of stopping, she demanded I marry by the season's end. I imagine she hoped a man might tame me, or I'd find joy in the domestic life. I refused, and . . .

[She shrugs. And then I was disowned, he knows the rest.]

... wow, and I thought my home situation sucked.

[Blithe as that response may be, he doesn't mean to be insensitive. On the contrary, it's clear that he's taking her quite seriously: his eyes are dark and narrow as he digests everything she's just told him. It isn't precisely shocking to hear what she's been through: he knew she'd had a rough time being a woman with brains and ambition in the 19th century, and this is certainly consistent with that prior knowledge. But still, to discover that even her mother treated her cruelly because of it...

I imagine she hoped a man might tame me. TAME her, she said. Like a dog. And for what, because she wanted to go to school instead of marry some random fucker who was twice as old and half as smart as she was? If he could fist fight an entire era right now, he would.]

I'm guessing your old man didn't step in?

Women's business.

[Naturally he hadn't stepped in. Why would he? The world of courtship and engagement and marriage was for Rosalind's mother to fuss about. Oh, no doubt he'd been informed of his daughter's stubbornness, but it was hardly on for him to offer any advice or stern commandment.]

My father . . . he was fond of me. Certainly he indulged me by allowing me to attend Girton. But I think both of them imagined I would come crawling back within a year.

[Her gaze flickers down for a moment before she meets his eyes once more. There's something in his expression that keeps taking her off-guard. It isn't that she finds his sharp anger unpleasant or inappropriate, but . . . she hadn't really expected the sudden seriousness. Oh, she hadn't thought he'd joke, he's not nearly that flippant, but she'd thought . . . what? That he'd hastily change the subject, perhaps, or simply slip past it with a slight shrug.

But he hadn't. He's angry, visibly so, on her behalf. And she doesn't quite know what to do with that.]

Sounds like Pops had a pretty convenient excuse not to stick his neck out.

[Women's business... Yusuke scoffs, furious and derisive, and picks at a loose splinter of wood on the table as he launches headfirst into a fiery tirade fanned by the injustice of what Rosalind's described.]

I'm not a historian or some straight-A honor student with a bankroll, but back then, it was the men who called all the shots, right? So why the hell didn't he stop your mom from givin' you the axe? If he cared so much about you, he should've told your mom to get over herself and let you get a degree or do whatever the hell else you wanted. It's guys like him who see screwed up things happening and don't do anything about it that really piss me off!

[God. God, he'd been like this when she'd told him of her murder, too. He'd been so furious on her behalf, and he'd barely known her then. Did he suffer, Urameshi had demanded to know, despite the fact all she was to him was a friend of a friend.

It isn't just that he identifies with her as someone who doesn't fit in. Certainly that must be fueling his fury, but it doesn't explain all of it. Rosalind really, truly doesn't understand right now why it is he's looking at her so furiously, when all this happened years and years ago.]

. . . I didn't fit in. That's the long and short of it. Women weren't supposed to be intelligent, and I was, and so I stuck out even as a child. They wanted . . . they wanted what everyone else wanted: an ideal, not the reality. A docile daughter and a pretty little wife, stupid and vain and domestic.

. . . is that what was expected of you too, at home? A role, not the reality?

Tch.

[Yusuke grunts and tips his head back to eye the ceiling thoughtfully as he considers his answer. He doesn't typically talk about this stuff with anybody; in his experience, talking about stuff is the same as admitting that it bothers you, and that's about as good as covering yourself in raw meat and throwing yourself to a pack of wolves and trusting them not to eat you.

But it wouldn't be fair for him to ask the doc to spill her guts and not reciprocate her efforts, and furthermore, he realizes she isn't going to crucify him for discussing more personal matters. So, gruffly, he tells her:]

Not exactly. If you asked them, I bet you every yen I don't have on me right now that they'd save face by telling you they just want me to clean up my act and be good and respectable like some of the other brown nosers my age. Between you, me, and that facehugging flowerpot over there, though, what they really want is for me to disappear.

[He isn't unaware of how grim that is. That's precisely why he doesn't let it linger, instead shooting her a sly, humorous sideways glance a second later and adding:]

Funny thing about me, though: I'm a pretty hard guy to get rid of. Not even death by bumper got me outta their hair. Really got their 'roids raging when I showed up at school a month after snuffing it.

I should imagine so.

[Robert's face would have turned pitying, but while her gaze is soft, Rosalind's expression is carefully neutral. That's a particularly dark thing to hear a young boy say, but she doesn't doubt he's telling the truth. God, she knows he is; Kurama had told her that weeks ago. They didn't have a place for him in the afterlife, and she still can't imagine how embittering that must have been.]

They're wrong. They want you to disappear, yes, and I'm sure to that end they've called you a thousand awful names and ascribed behaviors to you, and they're wrong, but of course, you know that. That isn't the frustrating part.

The worst part is that no matter what happens, no matter what you do or accomplish or say, they'll never, ever acknowledge it.

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