Disclaimer: Tenkuu no Escaflowne is property of Bandai and Sunrise, all rights reserved. I am in no way affiliated with these companies, or any legal proceedings concerning Tenkuu no Escaflowne. This story has been written purely out of enjoyment, and is not intended to make a profit, steal ideas, or offend anybody. Any similarities between my work and anyone else's is purely coincidental. "Dark Blue" song lyrics are property of No Doubt, all rights reserved.
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"Anywhere" - Prelude: Dark Blue
By The Last Princess of Hyrule
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"Unlike you, I had it easy
You're dark blue,
Stained from previous days,
And you're so sad,
It's too bad,
I wish you could have had what I had,
And it's too bad you're so sad,
Maybe I can make you feel better . . ."
-No Doubt, "Dark Blue"
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I killed them. I killed everyone.
Hitomi Kanzaki couldn't sleep. Her mind was in turmoil.
She was sitting up in her bed, staring outside through her room's tall windows overlooking Palas, the capitol city of Asturia, and the Asturian Bay beyond it. Light from Gaea's two moons sparkled across its gentle waters and bathed the sleeping city in an eerie glow. Patches of moonlight and shadow blended to create vaporous ghosts that had haunted the crumbling city streets every night since Princess Millerna's wedding.
On that day, Hitomi brought the city to ruin.
It's all my fault that they're gone. This city is dead because of me . . .
Her presence in Asturia had attracted the attention of the Zaibach Empire, which had heard about her power to predict fate. They attacked Palas with the intent to capture her, and ended up destroying half of the city. Like every other country, Zaibach wanted to use her abilities as a weapon against its enemies, as well as to control the fate of the world.
"It's cheating to know all the answers before the questions are asked, but everybody wants to know anyway," Hitomi said aloud to herself. "It's like there's no honor here on Gaea."
Back in Japan, Hitomi used to read Tarot cards to tell her friends their futures just for fun, but on Gaea, her readings were disturbingly accurate, and she began to see visions of the future. These talents quickly brought her to the center of a war growing between Zaibach, Asturia, and the surrounding countries.
"If I don't tell anyone their fate, then they won't know it, and they won't try to change it. Then I won't hurt people like I do." Hitomi shook her head and tried to laugh. "I could have saved Palas, couldn't I? If I'd just accepted the future I first read for Millerna. If I hadn't been so stupid to think I could change fate. Then nobody would have had to die."
Her bitter, forced humor could not lift the guilt of being the reason for Palas's destruction. "I could have prevented all this." Her laughter turned to shaking sobs, and Hitomi covered her face with her hands.
It's my fault that everyone's dead. It's all my fault . . .
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When day broke only a couple hours later, Hitomi had fallen into a restless sleep with her dreams replaying the day of Palas's attack. Outside, the sky was colored a pastel yellow, smeared with hints of pink, white, and orange, the remnants of an early morning sunrise. On the city streets, life had resumed as usual.
The citizens were working hard to repair the damage done from the attack, and unlike Hitomi, they were optimistic about the future. The repercussions of the attack had brought them closer together. Commoners helped noblemen, noblemen emptied their pockets to charity, and a feeling of unity spread through the city. The citizens buried the dead and mourned their losses, but they were quick to remember what they still had.
A loud knocking startled Hitomi out of her nightmare and into wakefulness just in time to see the door open and Princess Millerna enter her room. "Good morning!" Millerna said with a bright smile. "It's going to be such a beautiful day!"
Hitomi yawned and rubbed her eyes. As Millerna sat down beside her, she noticed how red they were, and her cheery mood vanished. "Oh my goodness, you look exhausted. Did you get any sleep last night?"
"Yeah, a bit."
"Are you still planning to volunteer at the chapel today?"
Hitomi nodded. Since the attack, she, along with Van and Merle, had been helping give aid to those who had lost everything at a small chapel on a hill overlooking the city. She was there as often as possible, and greatly enjoyed helping the citizens; it made her feel a little better about what she had done to hurt them.
"Maybe you shouldn't go today," Millerna suggested with concern. "You look like you're about to collapse. Why don't I tell everyone you aren't feeling well and you get some more sleep?"
"No thanks, I'll be fine." Hitomi yawned again and rubbed the stiffness in her neck.
Millerna looked doubtful. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
The princess's brows furrowed. "Is something bothering you?"
"What makes you think that?"
"I've seen you sleep--you can sleep for a long time. If you didn't sleep last night, there must be something wrong." She suddenly brightened. "Hey, why don't you and I go get something to eat? Then you can tell me what's going on. That is, if you want to," she added.
At the mention of breakfast, Hitomi suddenly realized she was hungry. "All right."
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"I was hoping to make a trip up to the chapel myself today," said Millerna as she opened the doors to the palace's Great Hall. "There's a shipment of supplies coming in from Cesario that I think they could use there."
"That's generous," Hitomi commented.
The Great Hall was vast. Hitomi had only been inside it a couple times. It was about half the size of a football field, the ceiling maybe as tall as her school's gymnasium. Millerna led her past the large dining table in the center to a smaller room. There were several of these average-sized dining rooms adjourning the Great Hall, reserved for practical, less formal meals. The one Millerna entered held a small table already set for them. "I was hoping you would come," she explained.
As Hitomi and Millerna sat down opposite each other, a small door on the other side of the room opened, and a servant carrying a tray of steaming food entered.
"It's nice to be able to eat without a whole bunch of people around once in a while," Millerna said as the servant placed two bowls of warm spiced porridge before them. "It's so tiring eating with foreign dignitaries all the time. You always have to watch everything you do."
The servant bowed and left. Hitomi dipped her spoon in her porridge and blew on it.
"But really," said Millerna as the door closed, suddenly serious again, "what's bothering you?"
Startled, Hitomi looked up at her. The princess's face mirrored the concern Hitomi had seen in it earlier in her bedroom, a look that didn't often cross Millerna's smooth face. When it did appear, however, Hitomi knew it was serious. When Millerna was worried, she was very worried.
"It's nothing." Hitomi smiled and waved it off, as if she were waving away her troubled thoughts. But they weren't so easily deterred, and neither was Millerna.
"You can tell me," Millerna assured her. "I won't tell anyone, if that's what you want. It's not good to keep your emotions hidden all the time. If there's something wrong, sometimes it's best to let it out and tell someone about it."
Hitomi half wanted to tell her, but she had no idea where to start. Millerna knew how Hitomi blamed herself for what happened to Palas on the princess's wedding day, but Hitomi didn't feel comfortable bringing it up again. She felt guilty for still thinking about it when Millerna assured her repeatedly that it wasn't her fault, and there were no hard feelings between them.
"I don't know," Hitomi began evasively. "I just feel really bad."
"You mean sick?"
"No, it's not that. I'm just . . . depressed."
Millerna took a bite. "What's bothering you?"
Hitomi decided there was no point in keeping it from her. Otherwise their conversation would just kept going around in circles. "I still feel really bad about what I did to Asturia. I know you said it wasn't my fault, but I can't help feeling like it was. I mean, it was my presence here that drew Zaibach."
"Yes, that's true, but you didn't do anything on purpose. I know it doesn't feel like it now, but this'll all go away soon. Not just the war and everything, but you will start to feel better too."
Hitomi stirred her porridge and said nothing.
"Trust me--you won't feel this bad forever. I've had my days where I was really depressed, like when I'd done something to make my father or my sisters feel bad. I know that's not exactly the same thing, but I felt horrible about making them so ashamed of me, kind of like the way you do."
Millerna smiled. "But eventually, when I was busy and not thinking about it, everyone forgot I had done something wrong, and things went back to normal. Everything will settle down around here soon. Then you'll feel better, I'm sure of it."
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When the afternoon came, Hitomi walked out to the chapel with Van and Merle not feeling much better, but trying to take Millerna's advice and stay busy. She was outside shaking linen shirts and folding them into a wicker basket when the princess her caravan arrived with the supplies from Cesario.
Several familiar faces stepped out of the carriage, and Hitomi hastily turned away to avoid being seen by one, but he spotted her anyway. "Hitomi!"
Her heart sank, and Hitomi forced herself to face him. Allen Schezar strode purposefully to where Hitomi stood, and she could tell he wasn't in a good mood. His blue eyes, which she normally found so warm and caring, were hard with anger.
"What are you doing out here?" he demanded.
Hitomi looked down at her basket. "Well, everybody else is doing something. I couldn't just sit around and not help."
Allen crossed his arms. "How can you just leave the palace like this? Don't you realize how important you are to Gaea's future?" He scowled. "You're always leaving without asking. Like when you went to Fanelia with Van." There was an accusative edge to his words.
Hitomi looked away, a slight blush rising to her cheeks. She hadn't told Allen about her trip to the ruins of Fanelia a few weeks ago. The same Zaibach forces that were threatening Asturia had burned Fanelia to the ground only a few days after she arrived on Gaea. "I . . . I don't think that's any of your business, Allen," she said quietly.
"Is there something bothering you?" Allen asked in an impatient voice that didn't invite her to confess the reasons of her bad mood. "Don't hide anything from me."
Hitomi's temper snapped, and she looked up at Allen with an angry glare. "What are you talking about? I'm not hiding anything from you!" She tightened her grip on the basket and shoved roughly past him.
Allen turned as she started to walk away. "Wait a minute! Hitomi!"
Hitomi paused, but didn't look back. "Stop worrying about me. I can take care of myself just fine. I'll go back to the castle later. By myself." She jogged away.
"Hitomi!"
But Hitomi ignored him.
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When she was out of sight of the church, Hitomi slowed to a walk and sighed. What's the matter with me today? She walked down the hill on a dirt path back toward the ocean-side city stretched out before her. I got mad and told Allen off . . . Hitomi stopped and looked back at the church. I can't believe I just did that.
How could she be so angry with Allen? After all, he was the man she was in love with. She had loved him from almost the instant they met months ago when she first arrived on Gaea. Strange that only four or five months had passed since she arrived. It felt like she had been on the planet much longer.
Hitomi looked up at where the Earth hovered in the sky above the ocean. Her eyes lingered on it for a moment, then traveled down to Palas again. Its desecrated ruin spread out from the harbor inward, filling her with bitter disgust. Tears stung her eyes as she dropped the basket and knelt in runner's preparation, her hands out in front of her and head bowed.
The thoughts of Palas's despair never left her mind since the day of the attack, and sometimes her only escape from them was through running. In a way, it relaxed her. When she was running, Hitomi felt like she was back home on Earth again.
She rose into a ready position. Closing her eyes, she imagined herself on the track at school. Her crush, Amano, would be waiting at the finish line. "Kanzaki!" he would call. "Are you ready?"
"I'm ready, Amano," she'd shout back.
"All right," he would say. "Go!"
Her head snapped up, her eyes opened, and Hitomi ran.
She flew down the hill and into the city, the image of Amano so sharp in her mind that she almost expected to see him timing her around every corner. What she saw instead were visions of desolation she had caused. There were broken buildings and scorched rubble everywhere. Homeless people in tattered clothes filled the streets, cooking over open fires and huddling together to keep warm.
When Hitomi reached the palace, she was breathing heavily and her body was drenched with sweat. Her school uniform felt disgusting, so she headed to her room intending to change into something clean. Unfortunately, the only other clothes she had were her track clothes, and they were only a mild improvement. She put them on anyway, and gathered her uniform together to find somewhere to wash it.
After ten minutes of wandering through the palace, Hitomi was hopelessly lost. Whoever designed this place must have wanted it to be a maze just to piss off the guests. How does anyone find their way around here?
Eventually Hitomi started opening doors at random, hoping for some indication of where she was in the palace. One of the rooms she entered was the palace library, which was filled with shelves of old dusty books that probably hadn't been disturbed in ages.
Forgetting her task, she went inside, dragging her fingertips along the books' spines as she wandered through the rows. They looked so old and delicate. Part of her wanted to pick them up and flip through them, but some of the tomes looked like they would fall apart at a touch.
A tall book bound in gray leather lying lopsided at the end of one shelf caught her attention, and she stopped to look at it. "'Alta . . . Kaeya . . . Mitsara'," she read aloud, figuring there was no one around for her to bother. "What a strange title. I wonder what it means."
"It's 'Study of Old Mythology' in Ancient Asturian."
Hitomi jumped and turned around. She wasn't alone after all. Seated at a table in the center of the room was the former Strategos of Zaibach, Folken Fanel, who had taken sanctuary in Asturia to aid in the war against Zaibach. Papers and open books cluttered his workspace, and her entrance into the library had obviously interrupted him.
"Oh, thank you," she said, feeling a vibrant blush rise to her cheeks. "You wouldn't happen to know how to get to the servants' quarters from here, would you?"
He shook his head and gave her a small smile before returning to his work.
"Sorry to bother you," Hitomi apologized with a low bow as she backed out of the library into the hall. Her cheeks were burning with embarrassment as she turned and hurried away.
Some time later, she met a nervous-looking maid carrying a basket of mending through the hall. As soon as she saw Hitomi and the clothes in her arms, the maid offered to take them and wash them.
Hitomi gave them up, but as the maid hurried off, she wondered why the woman was so quick to do this task for Hitomi when she was already busy. As she thought about it, Hitomi remembered how other people she met seemed to go out of their way to do things for her, even when she didn't ask.
Her wandering brought her through several crowded hallways filled with people coming in at the end of the day. They passed her quickly, saying nothing, but watched her out of the corners of their eyes until she was out of sight. They're trying not to piss me off by avoiding me, Hitomi said bitterly to herself.
Feeling frustrated, she picked up her pace. She was still in an unfamiliar part of the palace, which was probably a long way off from where she wanted to be, back in her room. But hopefully her feet would take her somewhere--anywhere--that she could be alone.
"Did you hear about Cesario?" she heard someone saying behind her. "There's a rumor going around that they're going to join the alliance after all."
"Really?" Another person joined the conversation. "I thought they just wanted to stay out of this whole war. Do you think Egzardia will join now that Cesario has?"
"It's hard to say."
Hitomi turned down a quiet corridor and exited through a door at the end to escape the murmuring voices. She found herself outside in a small round courtyard, no larger than half the library, enclosed on all sides by the palace's decorative walls and columns. In the center was a circular fountain gushing water into the air, and above it, the sun had begun to set. Its rays bled into the sky and stained it red--red like the blood of all those who died on Millerna's wedding day.
No! Hitomi scolded herself. I'm not going to think about that anymore! She bit her lip and started jogging around the fountain to distract herself. Her pace started out easy, but she sped up as her mind failed to uphold the reprimand, and her thoughts returned to berating her.
Soon her heart was pounding, and each breath she took burned in her lungs. Hitomi flew around the fountain at her fastest speed, pushing her body far past its limits as if to punish herself for everything that had happened. She was oblivious to everything around her, even the fact that the sun had set and pale twilight covered the courtyard. She didn't stop until her body hurt too much to even breathe.
Hitomi collapsed with her hands against her knees, panting heavily. As she looked up to take in the change in her surroundings, she caught sight of Folken standing in the shadows of one of the pillars, watching her with the slightest hint of a smile on his face. His sudden appearance startled her--she hadn't realized anyone had been watching her run.
"I found something I believe is yours," he said as he left the shadows and walked out toward her. He held out his left hand, palm up, and Hitomi saw her pendant glittering in it. "It was on the floor in the library. You must have dropped it earlier."
She picked up. She couldn't remember taking it off--it must have fallen. Sure enough, as she turned it over, Hitomi found the clasp was still together, but the chain was broken.
"Th-thank you," she whispered quietly, trying to choke back her tears. She could tell her gratitude didn't sound sincere.
I can't believe this. How can it be broken? The pendant, an heirloom from her grandmother, who died several years earlier, was one of the only mementos Hitomi had left of her. It had strong sentimental value, and there probably wasn't a jeweler in Palas that could fix it, or anywhere on Gaea for that matter. It was too delicate a piece for the heavy craftsmanship of most Gaean jewelry.
I'm so useless. I can't even take care of a stupid family heirloom . . .
Praying her tears hadn't yet filled her eyes, Hitomi looked up at Folken and smiled. "Thank you for finding my pendant," she said. "It's very important to me." She hoped her words would convince him of her thanks, and that he would go about his way, but the contentment in his expression faded and concern took its place.
Hitomi turned and started walking away. She wasn't sure why, but suddenly it had become very important that Folken not see her crying. She didn't want to look like a helpless child in front of him, weeping over some stupid trinket.
"Hitomi?" asked Folken behind her. "Is something wrong?"
Hitomi shook her head. "No, I'm fine," she said without turning around. "It's just . . . I got . . ." The tears were coming too fast. She tried to wipe them away, but they made it difficult to talk, and the excuses dying in her throat were no help. "I just forgot . . . something . . ."
She tried to hurry away, but her shaking legs wouldn't comply, and she collapsed in a seat on the fountain's edge. Sobbing, Hitomi hid her face in her hands and didn't try to get up. She was blushing madly, but whether it was from her tears or Folken's presence, she didn't know, or care.
"It's not good to keep your emotions hidden all the time," said Millerna. "If there's something wrong, sometimes it's best to let it out and tell someone about it."
As she wept, Hitomi felt Folken sit down beside her, which she hadn't expected. She figured her sudden breakdown would make him uncomfortable, and drive him away in the interest of not getting involved, but for whatever reason, he stayed.
"What's bothering you?" he asked quietly.
Finally, Hitomi couldn't bear it anymore. She was so removed from everyone around her that they didn't even know what made her feel so bad. She was so sick of being alone. She was alone all the time, and only two people had tried to consol her were the two she least expected, Millerna and Folken.
Her heart heavy with despair, Hitomi turned to him. She didn't look up, nor did her tears slow, but she saw his arms were open, and fell into them and wept.
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TO BE CONTINUED . . .
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