The Physics of Detachment

an Escaflowne fanfic by Kate Frost

*

I have two secrets.

The first is that I don't believe in fate, or destiny, or anything else like that. When I was younger I laughed at such notions, believing them to be the comforts of the weak, people who cannot stand to believe that everything happens by chance. And I hold to those beliefs because they were mine. They are mine. Whatever it is that Dornkirk experiments with, it is not fate, at least not as I understand it. Perhaps he calls it that so I and the others can understand better.

The second is that I'm beginning to think that Dornkirk is a madman. Not a visionary.

Lord Dornkirk first told me about the dragon in Fanelia yesterday and I pretended I did not know what he was talking about. I looked blankly up at his projected face like I always do, and he explained that the dragon was a threat to the future of Zaibach, then he asked me what the most logical course of action would be. So I did what comes most easily to me these days - I answered with my strategist's mind.

Destroy Fanelia -- then we're certain to eliminate the dragon.

Dornkirk nodded; it was like seeing a mountain move. He had really never seemed human to me, not since I woke up ten years ago and heard his voice echo into my brain. I'd thought I had died and was hearing a voice of the afterlife, and I suppose some of that initial awe and fear still remains.

I left the communication room and went to my own chamber aboard the Vione, and that is where I am now. I did not sleep. I did not even attempt it. I am rarely able to sleep, even on an ordinary night, and it would be futile to try and rest now. Besides, the Dragonslayers are waiting for my orders. I'm sure Dilandau is anxious by now, and eager to burn.

But I don't want to command them. Not quite yet.

I have strange thoughts sometimes. Sometimes I think I really am dead, and cursed, and this is my hell. Sometimes, other times, I think I am a machine, more mechanical than human - maybe Dornkirk and the sorcerers altered my mind as well as my arm. How else would I be so able to understand Zaibach technology, being from Fanelia? And I know how often the sorcerers use mind alteration, fate alteration - I am one, after all. I'd be a fool to believe my mind is as it was when I left Fanelia.

Or maybe I consider these things because I want to rationalize what I have become. I want to delude myself into thinking I'm a victim, not a betrayer. I want to be a dead man. I don't want to be responsible for my homeland's destruction. I do not want to bring about the death of my brother.

Van. I haven't seen him in ten years. He is much older now, but my mind still pictures him as barely a child. I loved him them, and he loved me back. That was when I was Folken Lacour de Fanel. Now I'm the Strategos. There is no love for horrors like me.

A knock comes at my door. "Come in," I say. I already know who it is.

The door swings open to reveal Dilandau. His eyes are gleaming redly. "Hesitating, Lord Folken? Don't tell me you're still attached to your home."

As always, his tone is mocking. I dislike him a great deal, but I know what he once was, so I cannot hate him. I only feel a distant pity, like some forgotten part of me realizes that he is one to be pitied and reacts accordingly. "No," I reply softly.

"Good." His hand goes to the sword at his side; that maddening satisfied smirk is still on his face. "Good," he says. "When should we attack?"

It doesn't matter. I'm damned already.

"Move out now," I say, my voice steady and indifferent. "And leave nothing but ashes."

*

END