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The Vision of Escaflowne: A Return to Gaea
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Part Four- I With Mine


A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
          W.H. Auden



*******

     urgent! situation critical! advice needed!

     shall be given. consider wisely.

     of course.

     reconnoiter immediately with council for a drastic change in
     plan.

     ...drastic?

     events too unexpected to continue in current vein. dealing with
     something we know much less about than originally percieved.
     too dangerous.

     ....

     disagree? warned you not to become too attached.

      not that! have spent more preparing for assignment than can be
     counted! refuse to abandon mission because superior has a soft
     spot for some human brat who misses her boyfriend!

     direct refusal to follow orders, then?

     ... will meet with council shortly.

     shortly?

     leaving Daedalius now would cause suspicion. will come as
     soon as possible. 

     agents will... keep watch over target?

     yes. original goal unchanged. 

     permission for reassignment?

     denied.

     why?!

     personal feelings irrelevant in this issue. target had previous
     attachment. mission incomplete, not a failure. don't sulk.

     not!

*****
     
     Hitomi, Allen noted dispassionately, looked beautiful.

     Although he had been enamored of her all those years ago,
Hitomi's odd androgyny had made Allen incapable of judging her by
his standards of attractiveness. Hitomi had been wonderful but too
foreign and unrefined to associate with beauty.

     She was even wearing trousers now, dark thick ones meant for
labor. Her shirt, though, was a sort of rose color and fit closely
enough to show new slender but substantial curves. A thin gold chain
glittering at her throat matched the one on her wrist and made the gold
in her eyes sparkle and swirl. Hitomi's hair hadn't grown as much as it
had been sculpted, cropped close on the sides but less so in the back,
and her bangs were almost to her mouth, framing the angles of her
face.

     Allen knew beauty in terms of cold, pale colors and delicacy
and poise, but Hitomi's tender earthiness was undeniably lovely. The
difference between her teenaged and current self wasn't surprising,
really. She had grown into her features, settled into her body.

     She was sitting on Allen's bed with Van at her side, and the
two never stopped touching. Hitomi would lean against his shoulder
or Van would tilt his head until it touched hers or the back of their
hands would brush together for a fraction of a heartbeat. Every
movement was poetry.

     Although he found this behavior very sweet and satisfying
there were serious matters to be discussed, and Allen was becoming
irritated that he was the only lucid person in the room. Even Celena
was propping her head up with her hands and smiling a dreamy smile.
She always was a romantic.

     Allen said, "So you're not positive that you're responsible for
coming here?"

     "What was that, Allen-san? Oh. No, not really. I mean, I
wished on the penny but it didn't react to the pendant just now so that
couldn't have been it, could it? I hadn't really expected it to work."
Hitomi looked down at the penny still lying in her hand. She made a
fist and opened it again, like a flower blooming. "It doesn't even have
the same... feel as the pendant. It's just a coin."

     "Maybe it was just the power of the wish itself," Celena
suggested. "Maybe you wanted to see Van so much you didn't need
an energist."

     "Maybe Hitomi didn't have anything to do with it."

     "How's that?"

     Van continued, "It might be that it was just a coincidence that
Hitomi wanted to come here before she came. Maybe this is all a result
of some outside influence or something."

     "I think Van's right," Hitomi said. "Maybe not about me
getting here, but things are happening that we don't know about, I just
know it."

     "Do you have any idea of what they might be?" Allen asked.
He knew better than to question Hitomi's hunches.

     She shook her head, and the room fell into silence. 

     The inescapable, final truth was weighing down the air, and,
after a time, Allen forced himself to say it. "You do know, though,
that no matter what brought her here, Hitomi will have to go back
home."

     "Of course," Van said too harshly. Hitomi touched his arm,
and he began to explain in a polite, carefully controlled voice. "We
agreed that she has to go back as soon as possible, but last time we
used the energist from Escaflowne and we thought we should do that
again. You know, to be safe."

     "We were planning on spending tonight here, then going to
Fanelia tomorrow morning," Hitomi added softly.

     It was obviously a stall, yet the clunky sincerity behind it
throbbed with heart. They were so young and so sweet, and they were
asking for so little.

     "Feel free to use 'The Crusade' and her men," Allen told them.
"And we should tell Daelin before you leave."

     Celena started. "Van's going away?"

     "Is something wrong with that, Celena-chan?"

     "... Of course not," Celena murmured, bunching up the
material of her skirt, a thoughtful little crease lining her forehead.

     "Well then, we should probably just tell Daelin and get it over
with."

      Van nodded and moved to follow the older man out the door,
but checked himself. He bent down so his eye's were level with
Hitomi's, who was still on the bed. "This'll take less than an hour.
Want to hang out with Celena 'til I get back?"

     Hitomi answered to the affirmative, and there was a pause. A
sense of suspended motion quivered in the air between them for a
moment like heat, until Hitomi reached out and tapped his nose. Van
blinked, then blushed, then hurried out of the room behind Allen.

     "We don't want to seem greedy about the rooming
arrangement. Celena certainly wouldn't mind sharing hers for the
night," Allen said in the hallway. He added as an after thought,
"Unless you prefer that Hitomi sleep with you."

     Van didn't answer, turning crimson from his collarbone to his
hairline.

     "For heaven's sake, man," Allen said, a bit testily. "You're
older than twenty by a good five colors."

     Van shaded to mauve.

******

     "... and the next thing I know, mud and geese are absolutely
*everywhere* and Oniisama's giving me that 'I Am *Not* Pleased
With This' look he has and most of the men immediately start doing
whatever they can to not look suspicious, although Gadeth's just
trying not to laugh, and that was the last time I tried to decorate
Sherazarde, let me tell you."

     "... Ah," Hitomi said.

     Celena smiled beatifically. 

     Hitomi leaned against her end of the window-seat they were
sharing, squirming to find a position that didn't hurt her shoulder
blades, and shading her eyes against the sun. The window was arched
and tall, large enough to be the only one needed in the royal
library. 

     Celena had given her a tour of the grounds with horrific speed,
cheerfully blatant about how she found both the palace and the job
distasteful. Showing a guest around was probably necessitated by
some Asturian rule of etiquette; there couldn't have been any other
motivation to do it. She had then settled Hitomi and herself in the
library for a good long talk because - she had said - libraries were
comfortable places.

      Still, there had been a frantic undercurrent in Celena's chatter
when she had all but pushed Hitomi in the opposite direction the few
times they had heard approaching footprints in the hallways or the
gardens. She was still talking with impressive speed, but Celena's tone
was no longer guarded and her eyes no longer darted from side to side
now that they were in this near fortress of a library. The Gaean girl
had pulled something off, and Hitomi wondered if Celena was hiding -
or hiding her - from something. Then again, Celena might have just
wanted to demonstrate how the sunlight played off her hair like it
would ice.

     Allen's sister really was an exquisite creature, like an animated
china doll or all the girls Hitomi had been jealous of in junior high
rolled into one. Prickles of the feeling were coming back to her
now; she wished she had a clearer estimate of how much time Van
spent with this girl. But that was just silly social instinct -- Hitomi
would
have known the instant Van developed the germ of an attraction to
anyone else; and Celena kept breaking off her monologue to give
Hitomi fond little smiles, cooing, "You two are absolutely *perfect*
for each other!" 

     And, in general, something was trustworthy about Celena
Shezar although Hitomi couldn't define it beyond an open sort of
charisma. It would have been nice to stay here long enough for them
to have become friends.

     Hitomi asked, "so, how is Allen-san?" to maintain the flow of
conversation.

     "Oh, fine, fine. He's a little tired from all the wedding
preparations and stressed from all the stuff going on here, but he's
handling it well."

     "Wedding preparations?"

     Celena tilted her head to the side. "Van didn't tell you?"

     "Van couldn't really *tell* me anything..."

     Celena clapped her hands together in girlish glee, then loudly
cracked her knuckles. "I guess it's up to me to fill you in. Allen's soon
going to be king of all Asturia and lord of his lady's heart. Although
though this particular lady will probably demand some sort of deed to
be signed in order to possess her heart."

     "Oh." Hitomi examined how she felt about that and was
pleasantly relieved that she felt almost nothing at all. If anything it was
nice, another happy ending. "Would you give Millerna-san my
congratulations?"

     "Alright." Celena wrinkled her nose. "But why?"

     Hitomi paused. "Didn't you say Allen was going to be king
after he was married?"

     "Yes. What does that have to do with Millerna-hime?"

     She felt a headache coming on. "If they're getting married-"

     "Oh, I understand," Celena interrupted in significant tones.
"Allen's going to be crowned after he's married to Eries-hime. Van
has *not* kept you abreast of local gossip. I'll have to reprimand
him."

     "Eries-san...?" Hitomi could only say.

     "Oh indeed. It's an epic tragedy of a story except it has a
happy ending. I'm even heavily featured. See, what happened was,"
she launched the tale without bothering to ask if Hitomi wanted to
hear it. "After the war was over, Allen and I went back to our old
family home until things were sorted out, and Oniisama spent a lot of
time with Eries-hime planning on how to rebuild things, since he was
an important and pretty knight and a recent war hero and all and she
was the princess. Millerna-hime was out in the countryside, tending to
wounded peasants, or something like that."

     "So Oniisama was spending most of his time with Oneisama,
and he got to thinking about how she was the first person he went to
when..." She halted momentarily. "When I first came back and how
much he trusted her opinion and how smart and pretty she is, and he
thought that maybe chasing after Millerna-hime and Marlene-hime had
prevented him from seeing who his true princess was. So, one day he
corners her in the throne room and kisses her hand and proposes."

     "That's sweet," Hitomi said. "So they've been so busy they
haven't had time to get married until now?"

     "No." Celena smirked. "She turned him down."

     "Really?"

     "Really."

     "She didn't love Allen?"

     "Of course she did. Eries-hime once told me that she loved him
the first moment she saw him. All quite romantic, really."

     "So what happened?"

     "Eries-hime told him that he obviously had emotional issues,
and she had no interest in being his romantic crutch until he was
secure enough to make his next conquest."

     Hitomi drew her knees up to her chest. "Poor Allen."

     "That's what Oniisama thought too. So, thus chastened, he
came back home and sulked for a good three weeks, during which
time he decided he wasn't meant for love. He then went back to the
palace and apologized for his presumptuous behavior and worked
dedicatedly and consciously for the public good for a year and a half."

     Celena's voice was mocking but a little affectionate smile
tugged on the corners of her mouth. She wasn't out to hurt Allen.
Celena was teasing her brother for the sake of teasing him, and that,
more than any interaction she saw between them, convinced Hitomi
that they had become real siblings. "So then what happened?"

     "Well, from what I can tell, they actually grew to be very close
friends. It was probably the first time Oniisama ever realized his
romantic interest was a real per... Oh. I'm sorry. I forgot."

     Hitomi  felt her cheeks turn pink. "No, it's alright."

     "Okay," Celena said, relieved but still slightly embarrassed. "So
anyway, after two years away from court, Millerna-hime came back. I
was there during her welcoming celebration and she, well, made it
clear that she was still interested in Oniisama. Oniisama was acting
funny though, frowning and kinda pensive. So around midnight Eries-
hime retreats to the garden - she's pretty anti-social, she does that sort
of thing a lot - and Oniisama follows her. Then..."

     "Then?"

     "I'm a little sketchy on the details, but Allen confessed his love
again. He even apologized that he had been so cruel to her in the past;
and said that she had no reason to forgive his former carelessness, and
he would gladly reverse their situations and love *her* from afar for
the rest of their lives if that would be sufficient justice. He told her she
was a wonderful person, and she was nothing like Hahuae or Marlene-
hime or me."

     Hitomi could see it clearly. The garden, warm and dark and
fragrant, with lily pools turned  to liquid silver by the moon; Allen and
Eries, standing a distance apart but focused only on one another, the
summer breeze toying with their hair; Allen's voice, velvet and
hesitant, blending into the night as he told her his final understanding
of his heart; Eries' wise, sad eyes trembling in the starlit dark. "So
what happened next?"

     "She turned him down again."

     "Geez!" Hitomi said in a puff. "Why?"

     "Millerna-hime still loved him or thought she loved him. Eries-
hime would never do anything to hurt her sister, and she certainly
didn't want Allen going around breaking her heart. But she did tell
him that she loved him too, and she asked him to wait a little while
until Millerna was mature enough to accept their relationship.
Oniisama agreed."

     Hitomi settled into the back of her seat before she realized she
had been leaning forward. "And they just waited?"

     "For another year. It was really an awful thing to watch.
Millerna would come every few months and make eyes at Allen, who
would always politely refuse all advances. Meanwhile, he and Eries
would be gazing pitifully at each other, and everything they said was
tinged with longing and had a double meaning. You could have
choked on  the atmosphere. And that's," her voice turned lilting.
"When I stepped in."

     "I like Millerna-hime, honestly I do, but she was making her
Oneisama and my Oniisama miserable, even if it was inadvertently.
She's usually pretty smart and perceptive. It's a wonder she never
picked up on their relationship on her own."

     "Some people get blinded by love, I guess," Hitomi offered.

     "Yes. I guess so. Anyway, I don't want to tell you the details
because Oniisama'd kill me if her ever found out - not that I'm
implying you'll do anything; discretion has just always served me well
before - but Millerna-hime and I had tea one afternoon, and two days
later she announced that she was abdicating the throne in favor of her
older sister, who, partnered with her future husband, wound be much
wiser rulers than she. And, without another word, she spun around on
her heels and left the palace and devoted herself to the hospital."

     Millerna was kind. Sometimes she hid it behind her station,
which was cool and glittering and remote, but she was inherently kind.
That sort of sacrifice took more strength and heart than Hitomi
thought she ever could have.

     Then the end of Celena's speech caught up with her. Hitomi
asked, "new hospital?"

     "Van didn't tell y... I should really stop asking that, shouldn't
I? Millerna-hime heads the first Asturian hospital open to the masses,
inspired by the one she helped build in Fanelia."

     "Fanelia has a hospital?" Hitomi wouldn't have thought Fanelia
was large enough to *need* a hospital.

     But Celena nodded. "It was Van's idea. A couple years back,
he came to Asturia, official visit, and asked Millerna if she would help
him make some sort of center where people could go if they were hurt
or sick, since she was probably the only person he knew who knows
about that kind of stuff. It was a few months after Aston-sama's death,
and Millerna-hime said that helping people and being useful would
take her mind off things; and in Asturia a princess must be twenty-one
before she can be crowned queen, so I also got the feeling she didn't
have anything else to do."

     Hitomi nodded, wandering lost inside the vast and important
events, the sheer amount of *things*, that must have happened after
she left. If she and Van had not been as close as they had, how easily
could he have set her memory aside in the excitement of creating a
new order?

     "It's a good hospital," Celena said into the growing silence --
all pauses were awkward in her eyes. "I mean, I don't exactly have a
lot to judge it by, but a lot of people go there and most of them get
better, and there's even a cart full of medicine that goes travels the
outlying towns, since the people there can't go into the capital all that
often."

     "Fanelia has a capital? Since when?"

     "Since two years ago," said Van from the doorway, leaning
against the frame with elaborate casualty. "Seaside was growing like
crazy and starting to compete with Castle over supply distributions.
Things were getting tense, so I declared Castle the capital of Fanelia,
which protected its superiority for all time, and that was that."

     Hitomi whispered, "oh."

     The air in the room was turning humid with romance. Celena
stood up, brushing off her dress. "I'll leave you two alone now. Don't
do anything I wouldn't do, but you'll have fun if you try some things
Oniisama would."

     Walking down the hallway, Celena smiled when she realized
neither of them had spared the time to answer.

*****

     Allen had a gift for confrontations. He knew how to prevent
them and diffuse them and provoke them; when they were imminent or
avoidable or necessary. He had a great deal of patience and a good
sense of time and a keen feel for people, and right now he felt betrayed
by all of them.

     The afternoon's meeting with Daelin had gone as he had
expected it to. Van barely said anything, just stared very dreamily into
space, grinning a goofy little grin which he wore so unnaturally it
seemed almost grotesque. It was only natural, under normal
circumstances it would have been refreshing, but it had required some
presence of mind not to smack him over the head after Allen's entire
repatiore of subtler hints failed to penetrate Van's smile.
     
     Daelin was stiff and hostile but poised, like a wounded cat. He
had made no objections to Van's departure, of course, going so far as
to offer to provide the transportation for the couple, which Allen
politely declined for them almost by habit. Several awkward thoughts
were almost spoken, but the speaker always trailed off in time to save
face and the meeting had ended without confrontation.

     Allen had been relieved. That was the situation seeded with the
most peril, and, if Hitomi did not make a scene or offend someone
(she would never purposefully do that) and if she and Van left first
thing the next morning (grudgingly, but they would go) and if Van
came back immediately (he was too honorable to do anything else) her
arrival would be, if not meaningless, than an essentially neutral event.

     Now, as he sat in the banquet room, picking at his food with
Celena on his right and an Asturian dignitary on his left, Allen realized
he had always overestimated both Van's and Hitomi's sense of tact.

     They hadn't shown up for dinner. Their absence was barely
hinted at, but all the daylight in the world was concentrated on the
room's two only unoccupied chairs.

     Beside him, Celena was a whirlwind of conversation with
Sarine, whom Allen had heard her call an 'evil slimy ferret of a bimbo'
as late as midday yesterday. She was preventing the princess from
leaving the table or asking any dangerous questions, which was as
obvious as Sarine's fury that etiquette required her to cow to such a
shameless ploy. Allen was glad his sister was getting a chance to enjoy
herself if nothing else remotely positive happened here tonight.

     The plan was still salvageable provided Van and Hitomi still
left early tomorrow morning and Van came back tomorrow night. The
only unknown factor still troubling Allen was how Van and
Hitomi were fulfilling the promise of this night, and if it would be 
embarrassing to get caught in the middle of. He knew what most 
young, reunited couples would do if blessed with their opportunity, 
but Hitomi and Van were two variables in his world of constants. 
Their actions were not determined by what they had done before 
or what was expected of them or even what was not expected of them. 
They were ruled by forces too honest and vivid for that. 

     Allen took a sip of vinu in an imaginary toast to whatever
those two were doing. May they enjoy the memory of it in the years to
come.

******
     
     "And that's the Great Northern Lizard," Van said, pointing to
another unintelligible cluster of stars. "See, those two all the way to
right are the tip of his tail, and that really bright one up and to the left
is its eye."

     "I think constellations only make sense if you grew up with
them," Hitomi confessed. "I wish I could show you some of the ones I
know, but Gaea's positioned differently than Earth." 

     She spread the coat, which Van had gotten for her when the night
had become cold, across all four of their tangled legs; then put her
head on his shoulder, both supporting their backs against the trunk of
the big black tree they were nestling under. "Tell me some more,
Van?"

     "I think I'm running out. No wait, look south and off to the
right. See that big star that looks kind of purple? That's Yunma's eye.
Yunma was supposed to be the Creator, according to old Asturian
stories. She keeps watch on all the world through that star."

     Hitomi gazed up at it, her green eyes cool as they reflected the
night sky.  "It's a warm color. That's good. All stars are beautiful but
most look so flat. It's nice that she chose a livelier color to look
through."

     Van wondered if there was a physical limit to happiness; if
there was only so much a body could take before its inside parts burst.
He couldn't ever remember being happier than he was now, and his
whole body ached. It was a warm ache, like Hitomi's head was warm
and heavy on his shoulder, and Van didn't care if his insides *did*
burst.

     "This is nice," Hitomi said, the words stretched and soft
because she was sleepy. Van had always thought that she had a pretty
voice. Back then, she would hum or sing to herself when she thought
she was alone. The few times Van had walked in on her, she had
looked horrified and blushed and the note she was on would die
squawking in her throat. (She had been embarrassed, he knew now.
She had thought he would think her childish and silly.) To hear her
sing he had had to stand outside the door or covered in the shadows,
so she would feel secure in her solitude.

     It had puzzled him then why Hitomi would only sing when no
one could hear it. He didn't understand, and it made him uneasy for
reasons he'd dare not contemplate. Van remembered the exact
moment of the exact day he realized why he had disliked it so much
while finding it so compelling. 

     Two years ago, Van had been having one of the soon to be
highly significant conversations with Merle about how one might go
about building additions to the wheat farmer towns, where the
workers' children could be kept safe and entertained while their
parents were out in the fields. Hitomi had been cramming her head full
of knowledge, which she did far too much in Van's opinion.
Unconnected, barely coherent ideas would float into his head, and
nothing interrupted a day's work like needing to sit down and think
strange thoughts sparked by an alien philosophy he could barely scrape
the surface of.

     There was music somewhere near her. It was diverting her
attention from storing facts and she was struggling to get it back. It
made Van think of her old singing, and he wondered, very distinctly so
she would know it was a question, what was the point of singing if no
one could hear you.

     The flow of information had stopped then. Hitomi's grey fog
of confusion drifted through him. She tried to but  couldn't answer him
with an idea. She couldn't identify with the reasoning behind the
question. Although she didn't think she felt any particular way about it
Van could feel a core part of her that was a little indignant and very
righteous and very sad on his behalf. 

     There wasn't a *point*, it had said. Why should there be? I like
to sing. It makes me happy and the world a little gentler, even if I'm
the only one who hears me. What's so wrong and confusing about
doing something simply because you like to?

     And just like that he had understood. Hitomi took joy in the things
surrounding her simply because she could feel or see or touch or do
them. He had wanted that so badly, and he had hated the wanting in
himself.

     He felt her sigh, the rise and fall or her torso and the breath on
his collarbone. Van put his head on top of hers. The muscles in her
back relaxed and she cuddled closer to him.

     It wasn't that Hitomi was innocent; she had seen most of what
he had seen and much he had not been there to see. A lot of her
memories were filled with truly gruesome violence, although she had
assured him that most of it was just play-acting and she was so
indifferent towards them that Van believed her. Still, on her world and
on Gaea, Hitomi had known great ugliness. It also wasn't because she
was happy. Van didn't like it when she was sad but she was often
deeply so. Privately, Van admitted that was better than if she was too
vapid to appreciate sad things.


     Maybe it was because Van had always known he was a symbol
and, as such, he had no right to try to be a person. It hadn't been hard
or crippling for him growing up because no one else had thought of
him as a person either. Balgus protected him and taught him and loved
him, but Van couldn't remember Balgus asking him how he was, or
even a real question, when he wasn't injured or ill. Merle was the
greatest little sister a guy could ask for, but she thought he already
knew everything there was to know. She respected him enough to give
him his distance when Van told her he didn't want to talk about it.

     Van had never wanted to talk about it.

     Then there was this weird girl, who looked like she was trying
to be a boy, with a crooked, thoughtful smile and an ability to see into
the hidden, bleeding, depths of memory. He hadn't wanted to talk or
think about her either because doing so twisted a kaleidoscope inside
him, jumbled up the reasons behind his life. Everything had hurt back
then; hurt like mountains cracking and collapsing, the rubble sinking
into an eternity of lava. He had been so angry, with only the broadest
idea about who or why. It had been a time of fire and enemies.

     Hitomi thought about light when she thought about fire. She
saw enemies as people who did not know each other well enough to
understand why they should be friends. Yet somehow, out of all the
places she could be right now, she was watching him point out half-
remembered constellations and falling asleep on his shoulder. Van's
chest ached so much the pain almost felt sharp.

     "Isn't this nice, Van?" Her voice had taken on a drowsy sing-
song quality. Her eyes were falling shut.

     "Yeah," Van said. The chill of the night was making her shiver, He
rubbed the shoulder his arm was wrapped around. "It's nice."

*****

     They came back inside the palace a little after two. Hitomi,
whose day had been tiring by anyone's standards, fell asleep in her
clothes and halfway off the spare cot someone must have had sent to
Celena's room before Van had time to step inside the doorway,
relieving the possibility of doing whatever it was Allen had suggested
that afternoon. That was something of a relief. He adjusted her until
she was lying fully on the bed and covered her with a blanket before
going to find Celena to confirm with her that she had a roommate.

     He went to Allen's room because thinking about anyplace else
Celena might be was a harrowing idea this early in the morning.
Candlelight was flickering under the door. Coupled with the rising
voices behind it, the door was just ajar enough to suggest someone
had slammed it shut so fiercely it had bounced against the frame and
opened again. Voices were only just audible, but listening to them was
like adjusting to the trickle of a stream and Van began to hear
variations of tone and inflection. There was a high, angry voice, and a
calmer, lower one that was just beginning to take on an edge.

     Van had never really had or seen a family argument, but he
correctly assumed that they were intensely private things. He turned to
go, when he could just make out, "... to me, Oniisama!
I'm not saying this is a matter of honor. Van can't afford to have his
honor question and he knows it."

     "Then why are you so worried about his leaving? Van knows
where he belongs and how badly he's needed. His loyalty is
impeccable--"

     "I'm not taking about that either! Didn't you say yourself that
the power of the Mystic Valley is in wishing for what you really desire
the most? Of course Van knows his place; that doesn't have anything
to do with how much he wants to be there. He's got the same problem
you do about confusing duty and fulfillment. Van's king. Van's a great
king, but he isn't a happy king."

     Allen started to speak, paused, then started again. "Do you
remember that old saying, 'the best leader is the one least suited to
lead'?"

     "Now you're getting it!"

     "I agree Van is a powerful man because he hates the concept
of absolute power, but you're not giving him full credit. Of course he
want Hitomi to stay or to stay with Hitomi, but if forced to choose
between her and Fanelia, there's no question he would choose his
country."

     "Logically he would. End of story. But when have star-crossed
lovers been logical?"

     "Hitomi left without him once before."

     "Yeah, and they were so miserable without each other she
wished herself back on a completely ordinary object. They're going to
use an energist tomorrow, and those have actual power. Did you see
the two of them together this afternoon, Oniisama? I've never seen
Van that happy. I've barely seen Van anything approaching just plain
happy before, but I've only seen people act like he did today under the
influence of-"

     "Celena!"

     "Sorry. Anyway, Van would *choose* Fanelia, but he *wants*
Hitomi. And isn't the wanting what really matters in this case?"

     Allen paused again. When he spoke next he didn't sound
convinced, but he was considering the matter. "Even knowing all
this, what could we do? We can't prevent him from leaving, and even
if we did through some miracle, if this is as serious as you seem to
believe, it would only prolong the inevitable."

     Celena didn't answer immediately. "I don't know. Van's our
friend. I'm sure you want him to be as happy as I do; if he wasn't so
important I'd be helping him pack right now. But we need him. Gaea
needs him. He's holding it together with his bare hands. I... just don't
know."

     Van left soundlessly from the direction he had come, a heavy
stone in the pit of his stomach and an iron clamp on the memories of
the past ten minutes.

******

     They were going to do this as quickly and unobtrusively as
possible. Van woke her up, to get dressed and eat something, before
dawn. He also woke Celena by what he claimed was an accident. She
threw a pillow at his head with impressive force and accuracy before
going back to sleep.

     The 'Crusade' was prepared and ready when they arrived at
the landing bay. Allen had told her the previous day that it was usually
a four hour journey from here to Fanelia -- at top speed, it could be
shortened to a little over three. Judging by the uncharacteristic grim
efficiency of the crew as they worked, they had been instructed to
arrive in Fanelia in an hour and a half.

     In a way, this almost felt like the last day of summer camp.
Hitomi had always woken up early to say goodbye to friends from
Osaka before they left, when the before-dawn sky was always grey
and grainy. She would spend hours wandering around the campus,
saying goodbye as friends trickled out of her life. They were all were
perpetually hysterically teary, hoping their parents would come soon
while being so angry at them for taking them away. Every single year,
no matter how blue the sky was by noon, it never stopped being grey
and coarse, like very old black-and-white photographs of people with
ramrod spines and unsmiling eyes. Hitomi had hated that sky; it only
tolerated farewells. 

     She looked at Van, who was standing beside her, but he was
staring up at the airship, his face unreadable. It was going to take
some adjustment to figure out what he was feeling instead of
automatically knowing. But there was neither time nor reason to
adjust, was there?

     Then, Hitomi realized with a jolt that she would most probably
never have any sort of contact with Van again. They still weren't
connected and coming back again would be futile and dangerous. She
had known all this since yesterday but had been too bewildered and
ecstatic to let herself understand it.

     Frost was beginning to line the inside of Hitomi's stomach, and
her chest felt thin and tight, filling up with a balloon. Why had she
been allowed to come here? What was the point? To say one final
goodbye to Van before he married the most beautiful princess in the
land and had a herd of skinny, wild-eyed princelings?

     It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

     "You ready?" Van's voice was as quiet as she'd ever heard it.
In the near absence of light he looked old and tired and scared. Van
wasn't savoring this anymore than she was.

     She tried to smile, although the end result didn't feel like a
smile. "Why not?"

     Van shrugged. "I don't know," he said irritably, and he didn't
look back at her as he boarded the 'Crusade'.

     Hitomi made a face at his back. Van couldn't have seen it, but
the gesture was one of general defiance and it gave her the self-
righteousness she needed to be able to march into the airship. Before
the hatch closed, Hitomi had one last glimpse of the sky. It was 
vibrant, an internally lit dark blue; the color of spring days before the
sun has had time to rise.

*****

     Van wasn't talking to her. He didn't seem to be mad
or even sulking,  just staring at the floor a few inches in front of
where they sat on an unoccupied section of the bridge, behind a
lifeboat. They had gone there for privacy. In hindsight, since they
weren't speaking or touching or even really looking at each other, it
seemed like a silly, unnecessary thing to have done.

     The balloon-tightness in Hitomi's chest was spreading. She
was twitchy and impatient, going stir-crazy more from tension than
from time. She looked over at Van, who was lost in his private galaxy
of grief, and suddenly felt new resolve not to let their last few hours
together be this miserable.

     "Give me your hand," she said suddenly.

     Van turned his head around slowly, seemingly too lethargic to
bother with anything more. "What?"

     "Give me your hand," Hitomi repeated, holding out her own.

     Van raised a eyebrow, finding this all very suspect, but he
gingerly laid his hand atop hers. Hitomi turned it palm-side up, biting
her lip. A friend had taught her to read palms when she was eleven or
twelve, but Hitomi had been too loyal to her tarot cards to master any
other occult art. Eight years later, she had only wisps of memory to
instruct her. Hitomi bent her head down low, strands of her hair
brushing against his hand.

     After a minute or so, she traced the thinnest arch on his hand
with her fingernail. "It goes all the way up. You're going to live a long
time."

     "Why?"

     "That's your life line. All the lines in your hand represent an
aspect of your future."

     "Really?"

     "I don't know. I don't pretend to know about that kind of stuff
anymore." She laughed a little, but they both sensed it touched upon
something true and sad. They lapsed into silence again. Van, however,
did not try to reclaim his hand.

     Hitomi examined it minutely. It was broad and square, larger
and tougher than her own. Thick calluses lined the base of his fingers
and his fingertips. A working man's hand. Looking at if for
probably too long a time, Hitomi though she saw something a little off
about the configuration of the creases in his palm. They looked askew,
on-center instead of arching into his fingers. She peered closer and
then closer again until her nose almost touched his hand, when she
recognized the abnormality. A thin white-red line ran across the center
of Van's palm, parallel to his wrist. She looked back up and smiled at
his confusion, as if he thought that her behavior might have been some
sort of Terrian courtship ritual. 

     "That must have been a bad cut. What happened?"

     Van's expression shifted again. He looked down, raking his
fingers through his hair, a little sheepish. "I picked up a sword by the
blade."

     "The blade?"

     "I was only four," Van said quickly, not the first time he had
ever had to use that defense. "I didn't really like swords when I was a
little kid. I thought that maybe if I spent time around them before I had
to go through actual training I might get used to them and be less...
and like them more. So, when no one was looking, I snuck into the
armory, where there was this big, heavy sword propped up on the wall
next to me. I tried to lift it up, but it fell out of the sheath. So I tried to
pick it off of the ground by the hilt, but it was too heavy. The blade
looked a lot lighter so I tried that. Anuaue found me screaming my
head off and... what's wrong?"

     She didn't know if she could articulate the emotion welling up
inside her. Even if she could, it was not something Van would want or
need to hear, so she just tucked her chin into her chest and sniffled and
blinked in hard, rapid succession in reflex to immanent tears.

     Confused and a little insecure but fairly certain he should do
something, Van put an awkward arm around her and drew her in.
Hitomi buried her head in his chest, still almost but not quite crying.
Van readjusted so Hitomi could get closer, and she wrapped her arms
around him, and he wrapped his other arm around her too. It was
suddenly the most natural position either of them had ever been in.

     She felt a little embarrassed to have done something as definitively
girly as bursting into tears for no apparent reason. There was a reason,
it was just so apparent that people didn't even bother to notice it
anymore. She should be glad she was teary; someone needed to
mourn.

     Van didn't deserve his life. He should have been able to grow
up surrounded by a family that made sure to tell him he was loved and
worth loving. He should have been allowed to have a childhood. He
never should have felt ashamed for being a gentle person. It wasn't
fair. It wasn't right that Van had needed to harden himself against his
innate kindness.

     "It really didn't hurt much," he was saying lamely. "Anuaue found
me right away, and I only needed a couple of stitches."

     Hitomi smiled against his shirt before she lifted her head up.
"I'm sorry I did that. I'm okay now."

     "Okay," Van said. Neither of them moved.

     "You'll be really surprised when you see Fanelia." Van sounded shy
initiating small talk for what was likely the first time in his life. "It's
grown a lot."

     "Celena was telling me about it earlier. She said you built a
hospital."

     "I didn't build it," Van modested. "I just introduced the idea
and it sort of got itself built in a hurry."

     "Uhuh."

     "Really." There was a long, comfortable pause, the kind
between people confident in each other's silence.

     "Van," Hitomi said presently. "You weren't planning on giving
me a tour or something, were you?"

     "Did you want one?"

     "Did you plan one?"

     "I hadn't thought about it. If you want-"

   "No," Hitomi said quietly. "I don't think I do. It might be nice
in a way, but..." 

     She didn't want to make this more painful than it already was.
She didn't want to see what she was losing. She didn't want to see
what she had lost to.

     She felt Van nod and wondered if he could possibly
understand. But in the quiet dark, listening to his heartbeat, it didn't
seem to matter.

     It wasn't fair and it wasn't right, but the past meant nothing
and it was not her place to say what the future would be. All she knew
was that at this instant she and Van were holding each other like it was
nothing unusual at all.

     And maybe that was good enough for now.

*****

     The rumor was one of the Fanalian pages had gone into hysterics
the night before. It was not a very widespread or appealing rumor -
who cares about a page? - but it was prolific enough to reach Celena a
little after noon.

     Ren had been sedated heavily. He was still sleeping when
Celena visited him in the guest pages' quarters, bringing a plush dog
that was the current fashionable toy in Asturia. She put it on a table
and asked the nurse watching him to tell Ren who had brought it when
he woke up. Then, casually as if it wasn't very important, Celena
asked about what had happened.

     "It was the strangest thing," the Nurse said. "He just started
cryin' and cryin' like his little heart was going to break into pieces.
Usually when they're this age they do this sort of thing for attention,
but he went on like someone had died."

     "Did he just cry? Or did he try to say things while he was
crying?"

     "Once or twice. 'He left us,' or 'He's not coming back.' Stuff
along those lines. Did his father abandon him, do you think?"

     "I think," said Celena, watching Ren shift in his sleep. "That
would be a great deal less traumatic than what I think we're all going
to go through soon."

******

     Escaflowne had not changed. Hitomi hadn't been expecting it to,
but everything surrounding the guymelef had grown passed
recognition and its familiarity was almost jarring. 

     The graveyard had expanded. The more people there are to
bury, the bigger the graveyard has to be, as Van had said, so matter of
fact that the statement didn't seem morbid until she thought about it.
The lawn was greener and trimmed finer than she remembered. There
were statues perched throughout the rows of tombstones, so elegant
and dignified they looked almost out of place.

     The energist sat on a pedestal in the dead center of the plot,
covered with a glass case. Although Escaflowne itself hadn't been
altered, it was on a marble platform which bore the simple inscription,
'May We Never Have Use For It Again.'

     "Do you like it?" Van asked in an almost shy, little boy voice,
as if he expected her not to and that would hurt his feelings. "Perione
planned this all out a few years ago, and it didn't seem like it could do
any harm, so I let him."

     The balloon in Hitomi's chest had started expanding again. It took
effort to say, "I think Folken-san would like the platform."

     Van didn't say anything, just looked at her with a terrible little
smile that was struggling to be a bigger smile. "Are you ready?"

     What kind of question was that? As if there was anything she
could do to prepare. The balloon was swelling into her throat so
Hitomi answered with just a nod. Van nodded back. They stood there
for almost a full minute, not even rationalizing their procrastination,
before he went to get the energist. 

     Seeing it in his hands made a claw grab her heart. Hitomi
wanted to cling to him crying, beg him not to send her away. It
was childish, but the situation was absurd enough to benefit from a
toddler's perspective. But Van was as helpless against this as she was.
When he came back she hugged him tightly.

     They stayed locked in the embrace for a long time.  Each
second of it was just a second closer to leaving. That was painful, but
not as painful as the idea of letting go. Hitomi finally pulled back a
little, just to look at him, although she didn't release his neck. His eyes
were liquid soft, focused only on her, exactly as they had been the last
time she had seen them in this place.  

     Hitomi and Van were both shy and skittish about anything
new, but they had spent the time to hesitate. He leaned down and she
leaned up, and they finally, finally kissed. They were both
inexperienced, the kiss was awkward and clumsy and Hitomi couldn't
imagine anything in her life being so perfect again.

     They hugged again after that, a short, tight, desperate hug.
Van raised the energist above his head.

     There was no pillar of light. There was barely even a flash. There
was only an empty graveyard and a red jewel lying where it had fallen
on the ground, winking in the sunlight.

End Part Four