Ok, this is the first chapter of my most recent fanfic, woo. I'm planning on having 1, maybe 2 more chapters after this then you all can decide if I should continue or not. I hate this first chapter though, kind of sappy, but I have to get it out of the way to continue the story. This is some of the very little you'll read of Allen and Van. Read and Enjoy!
Disclaimer: As all of you know, I don't own Escaflowne.
Possession
Prologue
Fire, every creature, every plant, every soul was caught in a blazing fire. Bright and wicked flames danced across fields in seconds, gaining and gaining with each unnatural stride. The inferno reached the stars, mercilessly trying to reach them and tear them down from the sky through the clouds of billowing black smoke.
Hitomi Kanzaki stood in a daze in the fog of toxic smoke, somehow unharmed and managing to make out the guymelef shaped figures; their darkened shadows ripped down the enemies in front of them, regardless of the countries they were serving. As long as the person in front of them was considered an enemy, they would die from their battle-ridden hands without guilt.
Screams of the dying and of the soldiers charging chaotically towards one another filled the air like the fire and smoke. Hell? Hitomi thought absent mindedly. An abnormal cackling filled her senses. "Burn! Burn!" The voice screeched with heart and soul out over the hundreds of fighting war cries and dying whispers, whispers of husbands and father, wishing their wives and children good fortune and happiness without their presence in life.
Her eyes widened in panicked fear as the thoughts conjugated in her skull.. . . Dilandau . . . Zaibach's attacking again!
"Van!" She cried out,experiencing extreme dread. "Van!"
"Hitomi!" A familiar voice asked worriedly, comforting the girl instantly.
She shot up, suddenly awakened by panic and a common voice, with sweat clinging to her fair skin and soaking her short blond locks. A young man sat on the bed beside her with concern written all over his face, his coarse hands were on her frail shoulders subconsciously.
"Hitomi are you ok?" His chocolate-blood colored eyes searched her face for an answer.
She panted in a hazed state and slid her warm and wet arms around his waist, leaning into his chest and smelling his scent before gathering herself. "Hitomi." He said silkily, softening his features and holding onto her tightly after a hesitant pause.
"…A vision." She whispered into his stomach, she knew Van had heard her muffled words, she felt the young king tense in her grasp. A holocaust, her mind corrected.
"Of what?" He asked sternly, reminding Hitomi of the way he spoke to the foreign diplomats during the peace negotiations of Gaia.
"Zaibach." She paused, almost not wanting to finish her summary of her vision. Though she knew she had to, Van and the others had gone through enough.
"Another nightmare of them?" He cooed softly in the silence. "I'm so sorry," his grasp gripped her tighter with assurance; "I'll never let them have you again. I promise."
Van's words invoked the memories Hitomi had of her recent stay at Zaibach. She had indeed been captured by Zaibach in the course of the resolution of the war. Vionne, with its numerous cold halls and militant milieu, that's where they had hid her. The Seers room had luckily not been a dungeon cell, but a simple, guarded guest room which buzzed with death.
Her face flushed from all the shocking events that had happened aboard that floating mass. Hitomi was glad she had her head bowed, to conceal her creeping blush and tears from Van. Her kidnapping had only fueled the fury of Van. With his vigor, he had assisted in leading a group in to rescue her when she was about out of hope.
Van's allies converged, sacrificing some of their peace treaties with Zaibach (even though Zaibach had broken most of the treaties first). The defending nations came together to fight the warring nations' outrageous ideologies and save their ways of life. Zaibach's enemies managed to defeat them, winning Gaia's world war. It had been difficult, treacherous, and painful for all.
Hitomi had been lucky enough to avoid most of that, of course, when Asturia managed to bring the floating fortress down with the rescue team and her still in it, she had felt to be right in the midst of it all. Though the team did escape in the end, she was transported to a safe location where Merle awaited, full of demanding questions about her Van. He chose to stay back and avenge his nation, his dead home.
During the course of these thoughts, the young king rocked Hitomi as she clutched onto him. He mentally kicked himself for reminding her of her kidnapping, apparently something had happened that had distressed her, but he hadn't asked yet, he couldn't.
A sniff pulled back the contents of her runny nose, Hitomi slowly pulled away from him with her head still down. Why am I taking so long to tell him the vision? She wondered, but she knew the answer and she pushed that fact deep into her mind to hopefully forget.
"Van…" her voice sounded groggier than she realized. He waited for her reply in a mute state.
"I didn't have a dream, it was a vision, I'm sure of it. I saw…fire, a big battle-Van! Dilandau's coming back!" Her raised voice cut fiercely through the silence.
She didn't miss his short gasp and look of surprise. Her green eyes stared up at him through water, pleading that he'd understand that she was telling the truth.
"Hitomi…" She immediately recognized his tone of skepticism,
"-No! It wasn't a dream, I know you think it was, but it wasn't!" She pleaded loudly.
He glanced over his shoulder, seeing if anyone was waking up due to the volume of her voice. "Look, you've been through a lot the past few days, who's to say that wasn't a dream?"
"I can tell the difference between a dream and a vision, Van." She coldly spat out.
"Obviously something happened to you and you're not thinking right!" He said with increasing frustration.
"I knew you wouldn't believe me!" she cried.
Van snapped. "Why should I believe a fucking diluted girl?"
Hitomi's brown knitted together quickly and she could see Van look away, he hadn't meant to say that, but it had come out anyway.
"Did you just call me a 'fucking diluted girl'?"
"Oh come on, I'm not the only one's that's noticed. You've been off since your abduction."
The Mystic Moon girl sat quietly, beginning to feel the cool chill of the wind through her open window and the heat of her tears steadily falling down her face.
"I don't know what happened to you and it's not like you're telling us!" He added after glancing at her pitiful lack of self-control.
"Van, you have no right to say anything like that to me, do you understand that?" She screamed.
"Do you understand that the war's over? How about that Zaibach is no more? And Dilandau? He's an innocent girl; a semi- eccentric and slow, innocent girl, but still harmless either way!" Van roared.
"I'm just telling you what I saw!"
"And I'm saying it was a dream." His voice became oddly calm as he stood and paced the floor.
"But it wasn't!" She shrieked, her plea piercing through the air.
"What's going on?" Allen commanded, loosing his knightly composure at four a.m. in the morning. He hovered right outside the door which stood slightly ajar. He wasn't going to knock; he could hear that something was unmistakably going down.
"Van thinks I'm crazy!" Hitomi bawled out as she hid her face in her hands. Why are my friends backstabbing me?, her mind screamed out.
The majestic knight visibly cringed behind the door, he remembered ordering Van to not speak of that to her. "Now Hitomi," he said calmly with practiced charm, "I'm sure he didn't mean it." He shot Van a heated glare as he entered the room and pulled a chair near her bedside. "Tell me why you'd say that so early in the morning, Van."
The two adolescents in the room were dead quiet; Van began walking to the door, ignoring their gazes. His messy, raven-colored hair turned the corner, leaving a perplexed Hitomi to Allen's verbal comfort.
He strode down the empty hallway, picking up speed. I wish I knew what they did to her, was all he could think. The draconian intentionally walked out in the middle of a conversation; he couldn't stand to be in that room any longer. She had changed; she changed right when he was beginning to feel affection for her.
The young man sighed, staring up at the sky; he saw the garden and walked into it. The cool breeze ruffled his hair as he sat down on a cold stone bench, his sleepy gaze on the Mystic Moon. What if she had never come here? He wondered. He knew that answer, he would be dead. I owe her my life and my people, but I can't believe her. Hell, I can barely look at her without wishing I could have her. She could so easily fool me and maybe that's why Zaibach wanted her.
He turned around to glance at her unlocked window. Instead he caught sight of a pillar of light taking her away from him without an apology or a goodbye kiss. His ruby-brown eyes widened as he screamed, "Hitomi!" and heard it echo off the walls of the courtyard as he began racing through the halls to her room. Hitomi! Hitomi, I love you!