Ouran High School Host Club Fan Fiction ❯ Pride, Arrogance and Vanity ❯ Her Gilded Cage ( Chapter 2 )

 

Nightingale in a golden cage

That's me locked inside reality's maze

Come someone, make my heavy heart light

Come on, come bring me back to life

A nightingale in a golden cage

That's me locked inside reality's maze

Come someone, make my heavy heart light

It all starts with a lullaby

~"The Escapist" (Nightwish)

 

A/N: ARRRRGHHH!!!!! *is buried under piles of Scholarship applications* I would just like to apologise to my faithful readers(if I have any) and say that I really am trying to get scholarship money and it's all I've been doing on top of math homework for the past few months!!!!! I'm SOOOO sorry!!!!! It's killing me and keeping me away from my three truest loves: Art, Writing, and my Kookie (being the most missed as he's playing rugby every Saturday and Friday). *cries* Please, please, please forgive me for not updating!

 

Now with that out of the way I'd just like to state that I will be on Spring Break soon, which may mean a couple more chapters and NO SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATIONS!!!! *does dance*

 

Disclaimer: I own nothing. At all. Do you know what that means? No? Well, it means that this is a work of fiction. I own no characters from Ouran HSHC and I never will. I am simply using them to portray a 'what-if' that is playing out in my own head.

 

ON WITH THE SHOW!!!

 

 

Raine paced slowly outside her father's heavy oak office doors. What was taking so long? He should have been done with this conversation 20 minutes ago. He must be making a business deal with the Ootoris, and her father wanted her to help finalize it as training for the future.

 

That had to have been it. Otherwise…. No, she wouldn't let herself think that. She had taken all measures possible to prevent what she did not want from happening.

 

Her musings were ceased by the click of a phone and the voice of her father calling out, "Raine, you may now come in."

 

Walking across the plush beige carpet to the doors on the other side of the hall, Raine took a deep breath and prepared herself to take the next step up to becoming the CEO of her father's young corporation. Her sweat-slicked palms slid on the doorknob as she turned it and the room felt uncomfortably warm as she stepped in.

 

"Yes, Daddy?"

 

"I have good news, Raine!" He looked happy, but guilty at the same time, and Raine sensed that he had done something that would not make her happy. What sort of business deal had this man gone into? Hopefully nothing illegal, Raine prayed, "What would this news be?" She put on a smile to show that she guessed nothing and played along.

 

"You're to be married!"

 

She nearly toppled out of her chair. "I'm to be what?" No. It couldn't be!

 

Evan Wilson shifted uncomfortably in his leather office chair and looked out the large window to his left. "You heard me, Raine: Married."

 

"Daddy, how could you do this?" She cried. No, no! It had to be some sort of joke. Some sort of horribly cruel joke. Everything she had worked toward and manipulated the outcome of was beginning to crash down around her; all with 4 little words that would have made any other woman in the world incredibly happy. But, not her; those words would never make her happy. Men were scum and they deserved no place in her family's business and fortune.

 

"I didn't have a choice." Evan sighed at his daughter's predictable reaction. She had always had a hard head and he felt it was time to soften it a bit. That meant making her do something she did not want to do. Several somethings, actually, that would all be beneficial, but she wouldn't look at it that way. She would just see it as one big tragedy.

 

"Oh, bullshit-!"

 

"You will not swear at me, Raine Skyy Wilson!" He thundered, and she fell silent, "Yes, sir."

 

"You must understand that I really and truly did not have a choice. They threatened to shut me down. The Ootori family's power reaches around the world and while you are very manipulative-" Raine started, "-Yes, I know what you do. I'm not a fool, young lady." She bowed her head in shame at being caught. "They are also manipulative and cunning. The Ootori family can shut me down within a blink of the eye, and we will be back on the streets, eating out of soup kitchens, and taking odd jobs just to survive. Raine, you have no idea what these men can do."

 

"Men with power can do nothing," She snarled, "They are pigs and idiots with no idea what happens when they screw with other people's lives. It always comes back to haunt them, always." Raine knew she spoke the truth. Most men with power really were idiots. She had manipulated and twisted enough of them to know. A smile here, unspoken promises there…. Why, they were practically putty in her hands when she turned the charm of her beauty on them.

 

"Threaten me if you will, but you are going to Japan to marry this young man, and there is no way you are getting out of it. You will gather your most important items, clothes, business and casual and we will leave for Japan tonight. The wedding is in 3 months and you must at least meet your fiancé so that you are not complete and total strangers seeing each other for the first time on the wedding day." Mr Wilson's voice became firm in anger and with one last glare his daughter swept out of the room.

 

Evan turned to the intercom and pressed the button for the main housekeeper, "Call the airport and tell them to ready our jet, then go to my daughter's rooms and help her pack. We are leaving tonight."

 

"Yes, sir." An elderly female voice crackled back.

 

****

In her rooms, Raine fumed, and threw a tantrum like no other. Clothes were tossed without care into her suitcases and several bottles of perfume were broken on the bathroom floor.

 

She would not go through with this. Ever. There was a way. Her fool of a father was wrong. There was always a way. She was going to be so cold and uncaring to the boy that she would make him hate her and call it off. After all, he was the heir to the company, and could keep his father from ruining them.

 

"Miss," The housekeeper's voice broke through her raging thoughts and brought her back to reality, "You must pack some business clothes. Your father instructed me to tell you so."

 

Raine glared and dragged her best suit out of the closet along with some slacks and button down shirts. The housekeeper hung them in a garment bag and gently laid it over a chair where she had folded most of the jeans and t-shirts that her mistress had so carelessly thrown in the suitcase. She then grabbed all of Raine's shampoo and conditioners and tossed them in a smaller travel bag along with some soap and a toothbrush.

 

"Miss?"

 

"What?!" It was the first word that Raine had spoken -or in this case: snapped- since "The Incident" and her voice had become hoarse and her throat dry.

 

"Do you want to take this?"

 

She turned to look. The old woman was holding a photo and at the sight of it, Raine simply lost the will to move, or even be angry any longer. As she gazed at the familiar sight, she sighed and took it, "Yes."

 

Out of the frame, her mother smiled brightly at her, holding a wig in her hand with the sun shining on the top of her completely bald head. It had been taken 2 months before she had succumbed to the cancer that had hostage of her body and she was still strong and happy. Raine had kept the picture as a reminder to be strong and work for what she was fighting for, even when others said it was hopeless.

 

It's what her mother had done. The doctors had said there was no hope; no reason to fight, or to try, but her mother had taken treatments and tried so hard to live, despite the fact that she grew weaker everyday. In the end, though, she just hadn't been strong enough, and Raine vowed to be stronger and find a cure for cancer and not just a prevention treatment like her father invented.

 

How ironic it had been, when they found that her mother had the incurable disease, while her father worked towards preventing it and how sad it had been when they found that the treatment couldn't cure, but only break down the pre-cancerous cells before they attacked the body.

 

Wiping away the few tears that had fallen, Raine tossed the photo into her carry-on bag along with a few comfort books and her Mp3 player. She gazed at her many bookshelves, and sighed. She would miss them all dearly, along with her hundreds of CDs that ranged from R&B to country and to metal. Unable to part with all of her CDs, she grabbed a few of her collector's and special edition Nightwish albums. Ok, ALL of her Nightwish albums. Her mother had loved the band and so did she. It's not that she wouldn't, but that she couldn't part with them.

 

On a whim, she lifted up her teddy bear from its place on her dresser and laid it in with her CDs; another gift from her mother. It was then that she came to realize that she was surrounded by items that reminded her of the one person that she had loved most in her life. Then she realized that she would never see these things again.

 

"Oh, Mrs Smith," She lamented quietly, "Can't I take it all?"

 

"No, Miss, Mr Ootori specifically said to bring clothes and those things most important to you."

 

"But they're all important, and I'll never be able to leave them."

 

"Child, this is the way of the world: You marry, you move in together, you leave things behind, and eventually, you find that those material possessions are nothing compared to love."

 

Raine smiled sadly, "I do not love him. You know this. He is being forced upon me like a vegetable that's good for a child; the child refuses to eat it, but the parents make them. I refuse to marry, but my father makes me. If this is the way of the world, then the world sucks."

 

"Yes, well, as true as that may be, you must do this. Now, let's get you and your items to the airport. Your father is waiting."

 

The two of them grabbed her four bags and made their way down the mansion's stairs to the open doors and the waiting car. As they drove away, Raine turned to gaze upon the only home she had ever known and silently tell it goodbye as she traveled toward the gilded cage that was being built for her by her father and an unknown man and his controlling family.

 

 

A/N: Yes, I'm quite aware that I got a little sappy at the end. Please review. I know this chapter's not quite as well written because I'm suffering a case of writer's block. This tends to happen when I have less than 20 things going on at one time. *sigh* Please tell me if something doesn't make sense. I have a feeling I left something out…..