The Lotus Flower
She walked, swaying slightly from one side to another. Her chin length hair was messy and rebel down the power of the winter wind.
Her chest felt numb, she couldn't tell if it was because of the cold and the snow, or because of the broken heart and the fear. She surrounded herself with her arms, only covered by a thin wasted cloak.
Another step.
Her vision grew dim and her head started spinning around, floating through the frozen air.
She exhaled slowly as she realized she couldn't walk any farther. The girl slowly crouched down, but before she could accommodate her trembling legs in the right position, the entire world grew darker.
"I am so hungry I could eat a whole cow right now" a male voice commented.
"Which means you could eat the whole herd" another boy replied in a happy voice.
"Hmm… maybe, yes" the other admitted. The steps of the couple got closer and rang in her ears like a whole march. Her temples throbbed as the persons got closer to the place where she was resting.
"BaKanda was especially strict today, don't you think?" the first voice said after a few seconds of silence.
"You should be more respectful, remember what happened last time you called him like that"
"Nah, he is not here, so there's no danger" the other answered in a cool tone that sounded almost over the young girl's head.
"Yuu is always strict, that's how he shows how much he cares about us"
"Or that he wants us dead. Hey, look" suddenly, the steps stopped, just when they were so close the girl thought they were going to run over her.
She knew they had probably noticed her and she wished she could stand up and face the two males, but her body was completely worn out and her limbs didn't answer to her brain's request to move. She was so tired…
" 'ello?" somebody called over her ear, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath tickling in her skin.
"Are you alright, miss?" someone asked from a farther distance, but still so close it rang through her skull.
She opened her mouth to answer, but all that came out was a moan. Suddenly, she realized her eyes had been closed all the time and, collecting the little of strength that was left in her body, she opened them just to face a dirty wall. Where was the source of those voices?
"Are you wounded?" the closest one asked and rolled her softly to her back. She waited for the hard touch of the floor but, instead, her head rested over the lap of a young redheaded man with a patched eye. Over his shoulder, a young boy with white hair stared at the scene with curious eyes.
"Hump…I…I…" she barely pronounced in a husky voice. Her throat was dry and even talking hurt. A soft cold breeze caressed her skin and she shuddered over the stranger's legs.
"Oh God, you must be freezing. Did you stay here all night? Wearing just that?" the redheaded exclaimed alarmed, reviewing her clothes. At the same time, he took off his own black coat and covered the trembling body of the girl with it.
"I… " she said once more, but an attack of coughs drowned her voice. The corners of her vision turned black and she panicked, scared once more of the darkness of unconsciousness.
"What's your name? Is there somewhere we can take you? Someone that may know you?" the younger one, the one with the white hair, asked with a concerned voice.
"Don't push it, moyashi. We'll take you to a doctor or something, alright?"
They kept on talking, but their words made no sense at all to her. The only thing that she understood was the last question of the white-haired boy.
Before the darkness could take her away again from reality, the only name that she could remember came to her lips. She pronounced it clumsily and wondered for a second if they had understood her babbling.
"Yuu. Kanda Yuu" were her last words before her eyes closed.
Kanda Yuu was meditating in his room like every other afternoon. Isolated from the rest of the world, he enjoyed the silence and calm of his chambers in loneliness. The only sound that disturbed the stillness of the air was the fire burning in the rock chimney.
A pair of footsteps suddenly interrupted his deep inhalation. They were hurried and Kanda could tell that they weren't from any servants, since they were more confident and firm.
The door opened without any advice and the most annoying voice ever finished interrupting his hour of meditation.
"YUU!"
"Get your damned ass out of my rooms, usagi!" Kanda roared from his place in the floor.
"But it is important!" his friend replied and the man could hear the redheaded crossing the first room that was used as lobby and entering to the one where he tried to ignore his existence.
"Get the fuck out of here and don't dare call me by my first name or I am going to cut the crap out of you"
"Jeez, Yuu, if Sir. Tiedoll hears you talking like that… The heir of the Kingdom of Kent using that language" the redheaded shook his head. "Well, whatever, I've got something interesting" he continued without expecting any answer. "There is someone out there asking for you" he sang. "She is pretty, you never told me about her. Was she your girlfriend huh huh huh huh, lover, maybe?" Lavi poked Kanda in one cheek, trying to force an answer out the mouth of the young heir, but everything he gained was a swipe.
"Get the fuck out of here" he deadpanned.
"But you don't want to see who is she? She is now with Panda, come on!" the redheaded took Kanda's arm and pulled him with all his strength. Certainly, and for Kanda's annoyance, Lavi was taller and bigger than him, so the young man was forced to stand up. As soon as they were face to face, however, the heir pushed him away and established a safety distance.
"Just come, Yuu, just a moment. We found her asking for you in the street" Lavi persuaded his friend, turning finally into serious mode. "She was half frozen out there. She must have a good reason to wander in the night with so little clothes for the weather"
"I don't care" Kanda deadpanned. Since he was not able to sit back down because he knew Lavi would make him stand up, he just leaned against the opposite wall.
"You should. Just come, maybe you'll recognize her. She has ridiculous short dark hair; thin, tall…" the redheaded gestured with his hands as he described the young girl he and Allen found unconscious in the street, remembering everything perfectly with his photographic memory.
"I have no idea. Get your fucking ass out of my room"
"…small mouth, and very curious eyes, one was violet and the other was blue; also…"
"What?" Kanda interrupted him fiercely and Lavi could see an intense flame burning in his eyes for a moment before the heir looked away, trying to go back to the original indifference he had shown, but it was too late already.
"OH MY GOD, YOU KNOW HER! Yeah, her left eye was blue and the right one was violet. Where is she from? How do you know her? What happened between you…"
"She had a mark in her neck? Something like a lotus flower tattoo?"
"Just down her jaw line? Yes, I think so"
"Did she say her name? What she wanted?" Kanda's voice was suddenly fast, anxious, and his eyes locked in the big rice paper panels that he had made bring right from Japan after his visit there.
"She said nothing else but your name. She fell unconscious after she babbled it." Lavi explained, staring intently at Kanda's face, trying to decipher the meaning of his solemn expression that felt more like some kind of mask.
"So…now that you know she is your lost girlfriend then…"
"She is not my fucking girlfriend. Get out" the oriental man ordered. He stood up and stalked to the next room with long strides.
"It won't kill you to go see her. Come on, meet your lost love and kiss her…"
"GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, LAVI!" a door slammed behind Kanda's back, leaving his friend alone in the meditating room, his mouth still open, ready to say the words that were never allowed to come out.
Lavi pursed his lips and walked out the castle and back to his house, knowing that once Kanda had called him by his name, then the thing was serious. He wondered what had happened, what was going on, but that was not the moment neither the person to ask. Maybe the girl would know something more and he wondered if she had woken up by then. Whistling a happy tune, he returned home, anticipating the answer from the lost girl, imagining a ridiculously awesome and wonderful love story that could be behind Kanda's violent reaction.
He would get the truth from the girl's mouth; after all, a love story was thing of two persons.
I was buried alive, I came back to haunt you
The first thing she was conscious about was the crackle of some bonfire at her right. The heat came after, hitting her body with warmth that tasted like glory after so many days out in the cold.
She discovered that her back was no more against the hard floor, but lay over a soft straw mattress with a wool blanket warming her body.
She was pretty sure she was home, but when her eyes opened, the ceiling was not the conic structure of her usual tent in the tribe, but a flat wood structure. The air was rarefied and stuffy and when she stood up and searched for the chimney, she didn't find the small metallic oven, but a big rock square where two big logs were incinerating.
"You are up, finally" a husky voice said from a place at her side. She turned to face an old short man who had been sitting down in a wooden chair reading an old yellow scroll, which he rolled with expert hands when their eyes met.
"You must be hungry, hope the soup is still hot" the man stood up and introduced a big spoon inside a caldron that was beside the fire. He handed a bowl and a smaller spoon to the girl, who took it. The smell of the vegetable combination made her stomach audibly grumble. She hadn't realized how hungry she really had been until the last drop of soup slipped down her throat.
"Thank you"
"You are welcome. Now, let's wait until my stupid grand…"
"I AM BACK, PANDA!" the yell was accompanied by the slam of a door and the whistle of wind.
"child comes" the man who the girl thought was "Panda" sighed and stood up.
Before the guy who had noisily announced his arrival could cross the doorframe, the small elderly jumped and kicked the newcomer in the jaw. The house trembled with the strength of the impact and the young man ended sprawled in the floor.
"Don't yell like that when we have guests" Panda spat.
"Sorry, hehe, is she awake?" the redheaded smiled apologetic and stood up with the help of the wall, touching the sour point where Bookman had kicked him.
"Yes. Here is the stupid grandchild I was just telling you about" Panda mumbled to the girl in the bed, who just watched the scene with curious eyes while a smile started playing with the corners of her mouth.
"Hey, there, feelin' better?" the redheaded asked politely. He sat in the border of the bed, since all the chairs, except the one the old man had been using, were occupied by bunches of papers, scrolls and books.
"Yes, thank you. Where am I?" her voice was quite husky, with a high-pitched note that Lavi had never heard before. It was kind of exotic, but, observing better, everything in her was kind of exotic.
She had uneven almond-shaped eyes with those two brilliant colors that shone with the fire; her hair was black and wavy, messy in a weird natural way that didn't make it look bad. The tattoo, three- finger-big down her left ear and which started in her jaw line was of a complicated and detailed lotus flower painted in deep blue ink.
Her clothes were also really strange. She was wearing what he thought were a pair of baggy beige pants which finished tied in the ankle; a loose short blouse and a black cloak that was her only protection against the cold. Lavi had once heard about something like that, but without haven't seen it before, he couldn't locate the possible origin of the girl.
"In my house. If you refer to the country, you are in the Kingdom of Kent" the ancient answered vaguely, focused in a new scroll he had taken from a pile of a corner.
"So…I really made it…" she murmured under her breath, apparently surprised by her achievement. "And I am not dead"
"Of course not, but you almost died out there. My name is Lavi and he is Bookman, but I call him Panda" and redheaded pointed first to his chest, and then to the ancient man who wasn't paying attention anymore.
"A pleasure" she made a small curtsy with the head in each men direction.
"And your name is…" Lavi beamed in her direction.
"Kahina Sadira Dolunay." She answered "But you can call me just Sadira" she added with a smile when she noticed the confused expression in Lavi's face.
"A pleasure, then, Sadira" he smiled. A weird silence installed there, and everything that could be heard was the fire crackling in front of them.
"Is here where-?"
"Where are you fro-?" Both spoke at the same time and stopped in the middle of the question.
"You first" Sadira conceded with a gesture of her hand. Lavi noticed that in the center of her palm was painted another tattoo in the form of an elegant spiral.
"Where are you from?" he finished his question.
"I am from a nomad tribe in the deserts between the Arabian peninsula and Turkey"
"I see, that explains lots of things" Lavi smiled again.
Sadira analyzed him as well as she did with every new person she met, something that was almost part of her personality. His hair was reddish, a color that seemed to be more common here in the north, and he was missing one eye, which empty place was covered with a black patch. Sadira wondered what had happened to him, but she considered it inappropriate to ask such a private question. His remaining eye was of a pretty green color and shone together with his never fading smile.
He was wearing a woolen coat, leather pants and a vest over a linen shirt; the same outfit she had seen in almost every man around.
"What were you about to ask, by the way" the boy said, interrupting her scrutinizing.
"Hmp, I was just wondering…amm…you are the one who took me from the street, right? There was another boy with you, one with white hair" she improvised the question, not sure if it was safety to make the original one yet.
"Oh yes, his name is Allen. He is now…well, somewhere around eating." Lavi contested. Sadira nodded sharply and the silence made its presence again in the middle of the conversation.
"What is your relationship with Kanda Yuu, huh?" Lavi suddenly asked, with a slight tone of mocking in the sentence. The question caught Sadira off-guard. She felt her throat growing dry once more and some sense of panic slipped down her spine.
"Where did you get that?" she replied in a tense voice, her limbs suddenly stiff in the bed where she was sitting.
"You said his name before you fell unconscious" the redheaded answered calmly.
He observed discretely her reactions, building up the puzzle that had been created without any success. He had been planning and fantasizing about bothering this girl and Kanda with whatever had happened between them both, but their reactions were so tense and this girl was so exotic and, in some way, unpredictable, that Lavi decided, for the first time in his life, to be a little cautious with his movements and words.
Sadira cursed herself in her mind for being so impulsive. She had been so careful about not telling anyone anything and, in a delirious moment, she revealed the complete name to the first one she crossed in the street. Damn it.
"That…that's a long story" she evaded the answer.
"We have time" Lavi insisted.
Silence.
"I don't" Sadira ended the conversation with that last announcement. She jumped from the bed and searched for her travel boots, which were just in front of the fire. She walked and put them on with rough movements.
"Hey, don't be like that! I'm not telling anyone anything! Come on, tell me!" Lavi went on, a smile painting his features as long as he realized that, effectively, there was something going on between his friend and this exotic Arabic girl.
"No" she deadpanned. Sadira stood up and took her backpack, which was also with the boots. "Thank you for your help, I'm truly grateful for your hospitality and if you ever need something, just tell and I'll pay the favor in any way I can" she bowed and disappeared through the door before Lavi could stop her.
Bookman was the first one to talk.
"Guess everyone here has got their secrets." He commented and went back to work.
"But I'm finding out this one" Lavi sentenced. This was something big, really big, and revealing the secret could be like a game, especially to a Bookman.
A/N: Hey there! well, it's late in the night (buu) and I am really tired, so I will proof read this chapter later. I also promise I'll try to finish my other fanfictions...one day, but I got this weird idea and I had to publish it! So please, tell me what you thing about it, I know it's bad, but I'll try to make it better along with my writing style, which is really childish at this rate.
I do not own Man. And I also don't know the entire political story of England, so I am sorry if there are some strange things here. However, it is fanfiction, right?
Please, review! I will not update unless I receive, at least, three reviews, so, come on!