Bloodlines
A Munto fanfic by Tripleguess
Genre: Drama/Flashfic Rated PG-13 for thematic elements
October 23, 2010
Summary: I came to share your nightmares. Not just your dreams.
It was dawn.
How she knew, she wasn't sure. The feel of the air, the smell of the wind; cool and sharp, like the breath of a star. Maybe it was the sound of the curtains moving, rustling in rhythmic sighs as the morning breeze drew them toward and then away from the window.
Birdcalls sounded, drifting up from far below; but apart from them and the breeze, she sensed a great stillness. She was adrift in an ocean of peace.
It was beautiful.
She reached for the alarm clock, not wanting its rude shrieks to interrupt that peace.
It wasn't there.
She felt around for a minute, without success, before it hit her.
I'm here.
She bolted out of bed, parting the bead curtain with a gentle splatter of sound, and shot to the window, stumbling over a rug and her own feet with sleepiness. She saved herself on the windowsill.
She had to hike herself up a bit to get a good view. The window had been built with taller people in mind.
Green land spread away below her, spiked with marble outbuildings and terra cotta rooftops farther down the hill. Beyond that, the island stretched out almost beyond seeing before it dropped abruptly away into the sky.
The sky itself was the deepest blue above, beaten gold along the edge of the land. Dawn came early here - not when the sun cleared the horizon, which was sky above and below, but when he climbed over the edge of the island. Predawn fire gilded the lower reaches of blue, shooting the clouds through with shafts of white and purple, heralding sunrise.
A wild joy welled up inside of her. I'm here.
She darted into the adjoining bathing room, filled with the secret delight of being the only one awake - and frantic to get out of her nightgown before everyone else woke up and her chance to have the run of the palace for a bit was gone. A dress was laid out, but she was pleased to find the tub empty. She'd beaten the maids.
She worked the elegant taps without too much trouble and took a record splashfest, ran a comb through her hair and yanked it into a hasty braid, then found a pair of slippers to guard her feet from the chilly floor and tiptoed into the hall.
Her feet were still tender. She'd dangled them over the tub edge to keep the bandages dry, and now the backs of her legs sported a silent red line across her calves. She made a mental note not to mess with the gardens and all the dirt there until her cuts had healed, and crept to the breakfast sunroom.
Empty, not surprisingly. But it offered new and splendid views from its glassed-in walls. She planted fingerprints all over the glass, admiring the already different sky, then snuck down to the kitchens.
There was no one around. She felt immensely pleased with herself. There was a pile of loaves from the previous night's baking heaped along one side of the big oven. Thank heavens some people up here still ate. She helped herself to a few slices and a jug of milk from the cool room. Her stomach contented, she set off to check the war room.
As she'd thought. He was the only one there.
He didn't see her. He was bent over a table, an Akuto globe nearby for light, running his finger over a dusty parchment. As she watched, he finished. He rolled it up neatly and banded it, then set it on a growing pile to his right.
It had been the last of a group. He sighed, then gathered them all up and rose to the overhead shelves to put them away. That done, he brought a new armful down.
She waited, leaning against the doorway as the sun peered through the long galley of windows and licked the edges of every parchment with glowing ivory, made the tassels at the corners gleam. It set his hair on fire and threw the clean angles of his face into contrast, light and shadow.
He set the new parchments in a pile to his left and opened the first one, then shook his head and rolled it back up. Evidently he'd gotten the wrong parchments. He scooped them up, put them away, and got a new batch down.
That was when he spotted her - standing in the doorway, trying to hold her laughter in.
"Yumemi."
She launched herself at him, overcome with the happiness of being here with him after two years apart. He dropped the parchments to catch her; they rolled everywhere as she hit his midsection and held on for dear life.
His arms were warm around her. "So I wasn't dreaming."
She chuckled, her voice muffled in his tunic. "Not this time."
X X X
It had been like that for the last three mornings. At dawn, she woke expecting school bells and cafeteria food, a future that included eventual separation from her friends via work and different universities with no promise of reunification. At the first voice of a wild swan, or the rustle of curtains from the open window, or the breath of sweet air spilling into her room, she remembered, and rejoiced anew.
She missed her friends. But it was a bittersweet sting, a momentary pang in the midst of good things all day long. Suzume would watch out for Ichiko, and Kazuya would take care of Suzume. She would write them, just as she would had they moved out of town.
And she... to her joy, she was no longer alone.
"I think you've gotten fatter," Munto teased her once. She was perched on the edge of the pool of memory, swishing her feet in the water to relieve the itch of healing.
She splashed him. "You should never say that to a girl. Especially if it's true."
He stood there and took it; water splotched his tunic and beaded in his hair. Then he leaned down and traced her cheek with his thumb, a touch as soft as the breeze. "I can say anything to you."
The tenderness in his voice silenced her. She caught his fingertips with her own, just briefly. The waiting was almost over.
X X X
"I'm going to one of the islets. Do you want to come?"
Yumemi looked up from her vase of hyacinth. Munto was standing just outside the doorway of her room. She hastily trimmed the last bloom and stuffed it in the vase, then set the flowers aside and joined him in the hallway. She knew from her last stay that he wouldn't come in.
"Are you going soon?"
He leaned against the wall, one elbow thrown up. It exaggerated his tall, lean frame. "Now, if you're free."
She searched his face. "You don't sound too enthusiastic."
Something, a shimmer of pain or of fear, showed itself in his eyes. Then it was gone. "I want you to come."
She cocked her head. "You do."
He nodded and offered an elbow. She took it willingly. Something was up, but... whatever it was, he would tell her in his own time. "What about food?"
"Taken care of," he assured her. There it was again; a catch, a dark irony in his voice, as though he were bracing himself.
She patted his arm, hoping to comfort. "You're starting to worry me."
He caught her hand, pressing it against his arm. "Stay with me."
She gave him a heated glance. "Why do you think I came?"
X X X
The islets were little bits of Magical Kingdom floating just off the main island. To those who could fly and those carried by them, they were popular haunts and picnic spots. The one Munto headed for today was on almost the opposite side of the island from the palace. It was also larger than most of the other islets.
"Are you sure Ithor won't drop the food?" she called.
Munto glanced at her. For reasons he'd chosen not to share, Ithor was carrying her on one massive shoulder while his master soared to her right. A basket packed with food was pinched between the Akuto weapon's first and second fingers. "You named him Ithor?"
"We can't keep calling him 'the Akuto weapon' forever." She stretched out an arm to touch Ithor's visor; he rumbled agreement.
"He says he won't drop it."
"I thought he said he liked his name." There was a rhyme and reason to Ithor's low-pitched vocalizations, but she couldn't understand much of what he said yet.
Munto smiled despite himself. "That, too. You're getting better..."
Compared to the main body of Magical Kingdom, the islet he was leading them to looked small. But by the time Ithor's feet touched down on the grass-dusted edge, it had grown to fill her field of vision.
"It's so much bigger than it looks," she marveled as Ithor set her on the grass. Munto was there to give her a hand down.
"The sky does that."
The islet was covered with gentle hills, with here and there an upthrust of black rock. The mildness of the land's curves gave one the illusion of being able to see it all at a glance, but... "You could hide an army in all those little valleys."
"You have no idea." He gave her hand a tug. "Come on."
Ithor trailed behind them, his footsteps making the land tremble, as the skydweller and his guest climbed to the crest of the nearest hill and looked down into what lay beyond. Munto smiled to himself as Yumemi gasped.
"There's... there's... it's a whole ruined city!"
He nodded. "It's a city of the Ancients."
She was still trying to take it all in. Beyond the initial rim of hills around the islet's edge, the land sloped down into a cup-shaped valley. Graceful pillars, many twined in trios like vines, shot sunward; others lay prone on the ground, swirled capitals gleaming among flowers both stone and verdant. Great pedestals supported giant statues; some headless, some not. A three-tiered arched aqueduct led from the far side of the valley to the near side of the city, feeding a clogged fountain in the center plaza that had become a bubbling swamp.
"They all... they look a little like the palace buildings," she observed as they walked down into the ruins, dwarfed by a forest of pink granite columns. Ithor had elected to settle on the crest of the hill, where he could see them wherever they went. He would have had difficulty passing between some of the buildings. The lines of the ruins did bear a striking resemblance to the palace and its outlying structures, but at the same time they were... thicker. Bulkier. As if a heavier-handed architect had built them. They didn't quite have the grace of Munto's palace.
"Yes. I'm pretty sure these people were our ancestors."
There had been an arch across the road once, but now it lay in pieces across the flagstones. She leaned down for a better look at one; miniature carvings danced across the crest, worn by wind and rain. She saw people, animals, and strange creatures that were neither one or the other.
"Oh! Oh! A house!" She had spotted a low-lying structure that had a humbler look than the buildings around it. She made a dash, then caught herself on the threshold, hopping on one leg as she looked back at him. "Is it okay to go in?"
He laughed. "This one is pretty safe. Just watch your step. Some of the floor tiles are missing..."
"You know your way around here, hmm?"
He shrugged. "I spent a lot of time here as a child."
A lonely child. Flickers of memory stirred in her mind, and she turned back to squeeze his hand. She knew he was into history. Maybe this was where his interest in the past had started.
He followed her train of thought as though he could hear it. "It was a distraction from the present."
The house was laid out in a rectangle. She tiptoed through room after room, peering in the half-light with her hands clasped respectfully behind her back. Some rooms were bare, with only light-starved weeds pushing through the cracked tiles on the floor. Others held small piles of crumbling wood - furniture long ago collapsed and rotting away. Munto was content to follow her, enjoying her enjoyment.
One room, larger than the rest, had obviously been the kitchen. It had an arched oven, a miniature version of the one in Munto's palace, and a skylight whose glazing had long since been broken. Sunshine streamed down, sustaining a patch of crimson poppies between the hearth and the crumbled remains of the table. Holes in the wall and rust stains indicated where metal utensils had hung.
There were still stacks of ceramic beside the hearth. She looked at Munto for permission before kneeling to pick one piece up, cradling it with both hands. It was a wine cup, she guessed, skillfully shaped like a flower, with petals for the cup and leaves for the base. It was a warm beige color, with cream snowflakes. One rinse to get the dirt off, and it would fit right in at the palace.
"It's still perfectly good," she marveled, and put it back.
A doorway beckoned to her right. She stepped through and stood blinking in the sunlight.
It was an inner courtyard, open to the sky. An old fountain stood in the center, three tiers brimming with rainwater. A slender nymph stretched marble hands into the first tier, looking for all the world like she would scoop up a drink in the next second. Thyme and lavender grew thickly out of brick boxes spaced around the fountain and invaded cracks in the pavement. More arched doorways led off into other areas of the building.
"This is a lot more formal than your gardens..."
He nodded agreement, looking at the symmetrical, rectangular layout of the planting boxes. "Mother liked freeform plantings. She said it made her feel closer to nature."
She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and comfort him in the place of the mother who was no longer there. She contented herself with touching his arm. There was room enough out in the plaza for Ithor to land and hand over the food. It was a simple lunch, bread and cold meats with some sliced fruits. She was hungry. It was delicious.
They wandered through the streets for another hour or two. She saw ruined temples, an amphitheater much like the one she'd faced the Elders in, and two bath houses whose cisterns contained more algae than water. Munto wouldn't let her go down into these last. "They're pretty foul, and the walkways are crumbling. If you take a spill, we'll have to scrub you with lye."
She could, Yumemi thought, spend twenty years rambling around this place and never see all the hidden little details. But they could come back. She parked her rear onto a handy capital to get a pebble out of her sandal. The pathways were in good shape, considering their age, but roots and rain had made them uneven, and a few of the flagstones had vanished. Later inhabitants looking for building stones, maybe? In any case, her feet were protesting. "I'm ready to go when you are."
He looked off into the distance, and the deepening angle of the sun threw shadows over his face, emphasizing his chiseled features and burning highlights across his hair. It was a full heartbeat before he answered.
"There's one more thing you need to see."
He set his jaw and took off, heading for a large half-spherical structure on the far edge of the ancient city. Perplexed, Yumemi jammed her sandal back on and ran after him, doing her best to spot cracks in the pavement before she tripped.
It was a coliseum... or something like one. It had had five tiers once, the top two curving inward to form a partial roof, but the uppermost had only part of its flooring and a few jagged supports left, like broken teeth atop an old jawbone. On the side toward the city plaza, an entire section of the wall had collapsed or been torn down, spilling granite blocks across the pavements in a fan shape.
Grasses and creeping mints grew right up to the wall. But once they stepped through the opening left by the damaged wall and onto the hard white sand of the arena, not a blade was to be seen.
She craned her neck, scanning the rows of seats. There were plenty of arched windows lining the walls, but... "I don't see any doors."
Munto didn't look. "If they were Magical beings, they didn't need them. And... they didn't want anyone else to have a way out."
She felt a chill. "You mean, they used this for..."
She stopped walking. He kept on a few paces, his footprints the only thing marking the bright sand between them, and then realized that she wasn't following. Across a space of ground that had seen things neither of them wanted to think about, their eyes met.
She swallowed and stretched out a hand. He had said that she needed to see.
"Show me," she whispered.
He took her across to the far wall and out a second-story window, cupping a hand over her eyes to shield them from her flying hair. After the glaring whiteness of the coliseum grounds, the green grass was a welcome relief.
He set her down, uncovering her eyes. "Here."
At first, she thought it was a huge mound of stacked wood. It wasn't.
She felt her breath freeze in her lungs. The next instant, she lunged for the coliseum wall and was sick against it.
Perhaps that was why he'd waited so long after lunch before coming here.
"I'm sorry," he said softly, and she heard the pain in his voice.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and clutched the cool granite for support. "How many people," she asked shakily, "would it take to make a pile of bones that big?"
"I'm guessing... the most obdurate citizens of several conquered nations."
Odd remarks, half guesses, and random information fell together, following each other logically like links in a chain. The city of the Ancients. Scorch marks on the ancient bones in that hideous mound of death. The United Army's eagerness to eliminate the Magical Kingdom when it sensed a weakness. The empire Munto's father had ruled - the empire that had broken up shortly after Munto's coronation.
No wonder he hadn't wanted it back.
She pushed off the wall and threw her arms around his neck, catching him by surprise as she buried her face in his tunic. "Why are you telling me this?"
"You need to know all the facts before you make a decision. Now you know." He stroked her hair. "I carry these people's blood."
She pushed back to glare at him, seeing where he was going with this. Death marches, nuclear bombs, concentration camps - if he thought his ancestors had a corner on cruelty, he was wrong. "You're not like them!"
He ignored that. "I need you to promise me something."
She felt her insides twist. She wasn't going to like this; she knew that already. "What?"
"If you ever see me... going this way..." His head inclined toward the obscenity beside them. "Stop me."
"Me." Her brows shot up. "Stop you." She shook her head. He was stronger and faster. He wielded fire and defied gravity at will. "What am I supposed to do - strangle you with my hair?"
He cracked a smile and shook his head in turn, then commandeered one of her hands and pressed it to his tunic. She felt the slow, steady beat of his heart.
"This belongs to you," he told her. "If anyone can make me listen, you can."
She studied his face. This was important to him, or he would have stopped with the bath houses. "I'll do what I can," she said, and meant it. It was her duty as a human being to prevent suffering if she could.
"Promise."
She held up a pinky. It seemed more sincere than anything she could say.
He surprised them both with another half smile as he reciprocated. Then he took her by the shoulders. "Then, Yumemi, will you marry me?"
She raised her chin. "I came here to share your nightmares. Not just your dreams."
He pulled her close. "Is that a yes?"
She closed her eyes and laid her head on his shoulder. "It's a yes."
They stood like that for a long time, embracing somewhere between the past's cruelty and its splendid beauties. Finally, when her tears dried, they went home.
a/n: This one has been incubating on my hard drive since May 10, 2009. I guess I was hoping it would magically become a flawless piece of writing; lately, I've been more worried that my drive would fail before I posted it. So I posted it. Thanks for reading.
DISCLAIMER: You know what's coming. This story not created, acknowledged or endorsed by Kyoto Animation or Yoshiji Kigami, to whom all relevant characters and trademarks belong. No infringement is intended. Bloodlines itself is fan domain and may be freely recopied and archived.