*HxH Disclaimer*
Author's Notes: I'm no musician at all, but the characters I'm writing about are musicians, so this might be a little tricky for me. ^^;; I won't be using any sophisticated terminology of any sort unless it really really calls for it. xD Until then, I'll just scribble away. ^^
Thanks to Nispedana and Bai-Feng for reviewing! :D I do a happy dance! :3
And hmmm I've done a rough outline of the story, and I would reach about 7-8 chapters. :P There goes my initial 3-parter idea. ^^;;; Also, the story will progressively go darker as I've mentioned before, so if there's a need, I may be changing the rating or indicating a raised rating mid-way, to T.
Of Dreams and Nightmares
By: DW-chan
Three: Sworn to Silence
The town of Nima was going to have a fair, and they wanted to see the fireworks.
It had been scarcely four days since Senritsu and Hika ran away, and been on the run ever since, past three more towns for two days, and a night across the sea to the town of Nima, a hundred miles away from home.
They could be hardly called children, and yet that was what they were, turning their heads left and right in wonder, now that they were finally free of their shackled, stifled lives. There seemed to be no regrets. Not once did they mention University again, the swing set, the study, their parents, their old lives—like a fading dream. All of a sudden, the world was a vast, endless horizon: they could do what they wanted, go where their hearts fancied, when they fancied it; and now, they wanted to see the fair.
The troubadours would be there—traveling poets and minstrels to entertain passerby; there would be carousels, and Ferris wheels, colored canvas tents, jugglers, fire breathers, candy booths, and of course, the fireworks.
"We gotta look for work too, you know," reasoned Hika. He was hoping that he could, perhaps, join the troubadours, even as he struggled with his poetry.
Senritsu looked up from her cotton candy, swirled in various colors, a striking contrast against her dark, blood-red satin dress. "Well, I'm a Hunter," she said coolly, taking a bite from the candy. "I'll do fine."
"Well, I can't be your parasite. And you've only been alone once in your life, during the Hunter Exam. You'll have to come with me," persisted the boy.
Senritsu shrugged, barely paying attention to her companion when the fair finally turned on all its colored lights, like garlands of tiny, glowing insects. She marveled at them for a while as they reflected into her hazel eyes, now like black agates. Night had settled in, and the fair had already come to life. People began to pour in swarms. Music was blaring in all corners, each one playing a different tune, so a delightful cacophony of sorts filled the air.
"What time will the fireworks happen?" Senritsu asked.
"You weren't listening to me," bemoaned Hika, huffing over his shoulder a small pack of belongings he had recently purchased for himself and Senritsu.
"We can talk later," said Senritsu. "So when will the fireworks happen?"
Hika looked at the flyer handed to him at the fair entrance by a small man with a harlequin hat. "Eight, it says."
"We've two hours to spare!" Senritsu pointed out excitedly. Like a small child, she tugged at Hika's tartan sleeve.
"Not the carousel. It's for babies," Hika prompted, pronouncing babies with a mockingly sing-song voice.
"The troubadours! I thought you wanted to see them?"
"Wait, wait, I'll have to tie my shoe."
"Be quick about it! I think they're about to start."
Hika seemed to be ever so slightly annoyed at Senritsu's childish behavior; she looked like twelve, so she's acting like twelve! He sighed as he bent down to tie his shoelaces, undoing them both so that he can tighten them up again in proper knots.
He dusted his knee and was about to straighten up when something caught his eye. Among a dozen tents set up on the fair grounds, only one tent had its flap closed, and it was the least lit; one can say that it brought attention to itself by simply being the dreariest thorn in a candied rosebush.
Hika turned to locate where Senritsu was; she was a few feet away, by one of the booths that seemed to be peddling oddments for young ladies; she was trying on a hat and peering through a mirror.
Curiosity kill that cat, Hika thought, but after having all the freedom he ever wanted for the past few days, all he wanted to do was be the cat. He tried to be inconspicuous enough as he lithely tiptoed his way to the tent. He had his tongue in between his lips like a little boy enjoying a ruse that he was about to make. When he was close enough with the tent, he reached out, and threw the flap open.
There was barely any light in the tent, but in the darkness he could make out the figure of a man seemingly in jittery alarm; he moved forwards and backwards—one moment, he was bent over a table appearing to wipe something off it, and at another moment, he was clutching at his hair in a frenzy. When he heard the sound of the tent flap open, like a frightened bird, he propelled his body to face Hika's direction.
"The good Lord help me…" the man was muttering when he noticed Hika; and the boy, bewildered, peered further into the tent and tried to work out what the man was fussing over on the table.
Hika's eyes grew wide; the light seemed to shine directly upon the open-eyed face of a man that lay upon the table; the man's mouth was slightly agape, and blood was pouring down from of it. Further down the man's abdomen was a hilt of a blade, and it had impaled the man through; the rest of the blade seemed to be buried into the man's flesh and into the table's wood. Hika was looking at a man freshly slain.
"I-it was an accident…" the man continued to mutter, high-pitched and piteous. He seemed to be in shock, he was shaking all over, his eyes were glazed, and he was sobbing and wailing as quietly as he could, lest anyone from the outside would hear. "We were supposed to… to open the tent and… but… but we had a fight, you see, my brother always had a temper, he would beat me, and…"
Hika couldn't find the words in his throat. He couldn't even make a sound. He stood there, stricken with a sort of paralysis, and the man, the murderer, was coming to him, tottering to him. Hika gasped and was about to take heel and run when the man caught his shoulders.
"No, no, no, don't, don't tell anyone! Please don't. It was an accident! An accident!" wailed the man; he was shaking Hika, and the boy didn't know what to do with the desperate, hollow presence before him.
Hika then found his voice, and it sounded so choked that he sputtered out the words, "I-I won't tell, mister. I won't tell." He tried to pry the man's hands off himself.
"You promise?" besought the man, with an iron grip still on the boy.
Hika nodded, hair falling to his eyes. "I promise."
"Promise?" the man repeated; his voice was harsher this time, and he shook Hika once more.
"I promise!"
The man released Hika and the boy stood there for a moment, realizing that the man had left smears of bloody handprints on his shoulders and arms. The world seemed to narrow and sway before Hika's vision, and the boy bolted out the tent.
Under the mixed lights and the shadows, Hika realized for the shortest second as he looked down his sleeves and hands that the blood seemed like tar or dark paint. It didn't look like blood, no, not in this light. He was out in the open again, and Senritsu was there suddenly, in front of him, and she was calling his name.
"There you are! I thought you said we ought to stick together?"
Hika wasn't sure if he wanted to look Senritsu in the eye. He dragged his gaze to the lights of the carousel somewhere to his right when he spoke. "Um, sorry. You know, had to do… business." He cleared his throat.
"You've gotten all filthy! Did you get into a fight?"
Hika defensively tried to cover the stains on his shirt. "No! Of course not. I was… I slipped on a wall with wet paint. That's all." He tried to sound so much like himself, a Hika without a care in the world.
"Well, it's a good thing you bought some clothes back at the Nima center. Those stains look bad."
"Bother the stains!" Hika said impatiently, his forehead knotting. "We'll have it washed in the morning, okay?" Hika didn't sound so sure this time. In the back of his mind, he could only think, they'll find out, the tent's too obvious, it doesn't have any lights on. The people will find out and they'll find the blood on me… He didn't know Nima's laws. Maybe Senritsu knew, since she may have studied some of the lands' laws as a Hunter. He couldn't see the path before him where Senritsu began to drag him again, and the caterwauling of the fair music only grated in his ears and into his brain.
The troubadours were performing.
There were seven of them, dressed in wonderfully bright colors that it was almost garish. They were all men but had painted faces, nearly stark white against the dancing lights, which highlighted their exaggerated expressions as they played musical instruments. One of them had an extraordinary singing voice and as six of them played, he flowed between narrating a poem and singing a love song. The musicians alternated between lyres, flutes, whistles, violins, guitars, and tambourines. It was quite a sight. Sentitsu stood there, entranced.
But not Hika. He fidgeted, he checked the time, he rubbed his cold hands, stomped his cold feet. He realized that all of him had turned cold. He thought he smelled the coppery stench of dried blood floating from his skin. He held his head down but his eyes were harrowing back and forth each face on the crowd, wondering if any of them noticed the smell of blood, too.
As the troubadours ended their first performance set, the people clapped and whistled. That made way for the fire dancers and fire breathers, and the crowd beheld the well-practiced routine in awe.
Senritsu was tugging at his arm once more, like a little child. It seemed like all day she had been acting like a little child. Hika ignored the pounding in his head.
"Don't you want to talk to them?"
"Who?" Hika noticed that his voice was hoarse.
"The troubadours! I thought you would have wanted to have a word with them, maybe audition or something so you could join…"
Hika froze where his two feet were planted. "Maybe later. Don't you want to watch the fire breathers?"
"I wanted the fireworks more. Now let's talk to your troubadours." She was beginning to lead him away from the conglomeration of people to the troubadour tent, but his legs were heavy. He refused to budge.
"Sen—"
The girl turned to him, her large, doll-like eyes regarding him with slight puzzlement.
"I think we should go," Hika suggested in a low voice.
"What?" Senritsu called. The music was too loud, the voices of the crowd drowning everything else out.
Hika felt encumbered by too many thoughts at once. He cleared his throat; his voice seemed to be leaving him. "We should go," he declared a bit more loudly.
Senritsu didn't seem upset; rather, she was surprised. "It's not even seven o' clock yet!" She tried scrutinizing his face which was veiled by his golden-brown hair. He drew back.
"Aren't you feeling well?" she asked, genuinely concerned.
Hika still felt the cold on his fingertips, down to his toes. He shivered. He thought for a long moment before he finally said, "Senritsu, I think I need to tell you something—"
Suddenly, there were screams and pandemonium somewhere where the unlit tent stood. Hika swallowed hard. The corpse had been discovered, and he knew the culprit was nowhere to be found.
Hika smelled the blood on him once more. Before he knew it, he was grabbing Senritsu's hand, and with their pack of things in the other, he began to flee out of the fair, taking Senritsu with him.
There were panicked crowds, and there were curious crowds; droves of people seem to drizzle on all sides, all corners, all at once. The two teenagers jostled through, and even as Senritsu failed to understand Hika's sudden need to leave, and leave hurriedly, she complied with where he led both their steps, far away from the fair.
Their shoes hit concrete and cobblestones; the moon was high and the air was beginning to freeze again. Hika and Senritsu ran, hand in hand, farther and farther away from the noise of the fair, until they could hear nothing but the dim reverberations of music as it played on despite the crime scene.
There ran through a tunnel, and then over a bridge, seemingly passing a hundred electric lampposts in the greyness and fog until they reached the outskirts of the Aspen River, which they had finally placed between them and the Nima town fair.
They panted and huffed as they skidded to a halt; Hika seemed more winded, and Senritsu almost immediately was able to talk despite her shortness of breath. White vapor drifted from their noses and mouths once more. It seemed to be getting colder and colder every night, as though they were anticipating snows instead of warmer days.
"What was that? What happened?" Senritsu asked all at once. She had unlocked her grasp from Hika's and was lightly shaking the boy to his senses. "Why'd you run all of a sudde—"
"Don't—" Hika tried to swat Senritsu's hand away; she was tugging at a sleeve where blood had stained it. Now her fingers had traces of blood as well, and she didn't even know.
"Hika…?"
Hika desperately tried to calm himself, to no avail, so he spoke anyway. "There was a murder."
"What!?"
"A murder!"
"At the fair? Is that why the people were all running around and some were screaming…?"
"Yes, yes, someone got murdered in the fair!"
Senritsu was silent for a moment. "How did you know? Did you see what had happened? Who killed who?" Despite her many questions, she did not seem rattled. She was merely trying to get the right information. Hika tried to focus.
"After tying my shoes, I went over and barged into a tent."
"Oh, so that's why you disappeared—!"
Hika made a wild gesture with his free hand, hoping Senritsu would stop interrupting him afterwards. "There was a dead man in there. And there was the man, too, that killed him—"
Senritsu's feathery lashes seemed to quiver as she blinked. "Did you see him kill the man?
Hika shook his head. "But he admitted it. He told me not tell anyone—"
"But you told me."
Hika then nodded. He pulled at his shirt, letting the dark stains show; they were like tiny islands on a map, but that's when Senritsu noticed as well that the patterns on Hika's shoulders were the patterns of hands.
"Hika, is that… blood?"
"It's blood, Sen. He touched me, he was trying to make me shut up about it."
Senritsu was tugging at his hand again. "Hika, we have to get rid of that shirt. We won't have it washed. We'll have to—oh I don't know—throw it maybe on this river, maybe bury it, or burn it…"
In an instant, Hika had placed the pack down on the dew-covered ground. He opened it and tore a fresh shirt from its depths. He began to take off the bloodstained shirt when he heard a rustling from behind them—around them. Senritsu seemed to have heard it as well. She was turning her head confusedly, attempting to pinpoint where the sound came from.
Hika was once again frozen, and even more so when they were earnestly out in the open evening cold.
"Senritsu," Hika whispered; he hoped he heard her.
"Hika," Senritsu whispered back, and he had heard her. "I know."
"We've been followed."
Distractedly, and now feeling his body grow warm and cold at the same time, he replaced the fresh shirt back in the pack. As though in slow motion, he swung the pack over his shoulder once more. He held out his hand. Senritsu took it.
"I think it's him."
They fought against gravity as they treaded carefully away from the foliage that surrounded the glade they were in. Behind them, the Aspen River flowed tranquilly, reflecting the moon and the many tree branches that loomed over it, like hundreds of spidery fingers.
"Run."
Their feet met soft earth and slippery grass as they padded through the glade. They had to run back into the street, into the open, where dozens of people and cars could be filling it, and they would disappear amongst them.
But they had not gone a few meters away when Hika felt an inhuman strength grapple at his shoulders. Even in those few seconds he recognized the grip almost immediately. A cry had lodged itself in his throat wouldn't come out. It was Sernitsu's small, startled scream that rang in the darkness, and yet he knew that they were still too far away from a living soul that could hear her.
He was violently dragged back and thrown to the ground. His breath was knocked out of him as his body hit the earth, but he refused to lie there. In an instant, he was struggling to his feet. A hulking figure of a human being charged at him and he met it, full-force. His grip had locked with the grip of his attacker, and he saw the man's face under the moonlight. It was the same man, the murderer, back at the fair.
"You said you wouldn't tell anyone—" choked the man through gritted teeth. Something like a feral growl escaped his throat.
Hika couldn't respond. The man was strong, too strong, and it felt as though Hika were trying to battle a titan with his scrawny seventeen-year-old frame.
"You lied! You lied, you filthy little brat! You lied and I'll—"
A sound of a flute playing filled the air. Hika had sense enough to know that it was coming from Senritsu; the girl was trying to emit a vision throughout them, towards them, but Hika saw nothing. He only saw the mad glint in the man's eyes as they bore down on him, unseeing.
Precipitously, the man's grip on him lessened. Then he was turning his head to find the source of the music. Slowly, like a prowling beast, he turned to Senritsu. In a flash, the man was off him and was on his feet; he was inching his way towards the girl who kept playing, her eyes wide, confused, and Hika knew that whatever Senritsu was trying to work on the man with her music had failed, somehow.
"Why, isn't this the poppet whom you told our little secret to, huh?" the man was growling, and for a moment, he didn't sound human.
"No!" Hika lunged at the man; but the man, seemingly like a monster now, simply held out a hand and with a flick of a wrist, struck the boy across the face. Hika was down again, and this time, it was the scent of his own blood trailing down his nose.
"There's nowhere to run, poppet," the man drawled at Senritsu, a deadly fire in his eyes.
Senritsu was taking a step back, and another, and another. She had stopped playing, knowing that it was futile. She could only emit visions, and it was up to the person's mind to interpret the vision and feel its effects. However, this man was clearly out of his mind. Senritsu felt weak. She hadn't trained enough, hadn't practiced enough, to break the barrier of insanity that imprisoned a lost man's mind. This man was now heading towards her, with clear intent.
Hika was still on the ground, dazed. Blood was freely dripping from his damaged nose. He was not sure it was broken. At that moment, he felt numb to the pain. He knew that the man would kill them both as well before the night was over. He had to act—
Senritsu was running again, and the man followed, speeding towards the girl nearly on all fours, very much like a rabid animal towards his hapless prey.
"Senritsu, run to the open street—"
Insane as the man was, he seemed to know at the same time what he was doing. A savage instinct drove him to corner his prey, and he was compelling the girl further away from any open street and was leading her to no other choice but to climb a rock grotto that loomed high, stemming from a hill across the glade.
Senritsu was agile. She was climbing the grotto with ease. The man was close at her heels. He was going to kill her, and Hika didn't know what else the man was capable of doing before that. With a cry, Hika was on his feet and speeding towards the man, who had only begun to climb as well.
"Get away from her—"
The man, like a machine, struck at him again as though Hika were but a mere fly. Hika dodged it, the man struck; he dodged. Hika wrapped his arms around the man's torso and was trying to grip with all his might and drag the wretched demon down. The man struck once more. He didn't miss.
Hika was on the ground again, and then he was up again, reaching for the man—
But he had disappeared. Hika blinked. Just like that, the monster and Senritsu had climbed over the grotto and had disappeared at its summit.
"Hika!" Senritsu's call sounded so far away.
"Sen!" He was not sure if Senritsu was afraid, or even hurt. He was climbing the grotto, letting his hands skirt through the rock formations as he pulled himself up. The moonlight beat upon his bare head. The moon was bright enough for any happenstance passerby to notice their chase and struggle. Where was everyone? Wasn't there anyone?
Hika finally reached the summit, and wildly searched for both the man and his friend. He spotted their silhouettes under the blue light of the moon. Senritsu was upright, unhurt, her hair whipping around her. The man had cornered her to the edge of a cliff.
The grotto was only a façade to a deep cavern which fell many feet below to a dense forest, and Hika could only see blackness below him, even as he stood a good distance away from the cliff. His eyes darted from the black abyss to the man.
As though a certain madness had overcome him as well, Hika found himself charging at the man at full speed.
The icy air hit his face, and then he felt the solid body of the man against him. He knew that Senritsu would move out of the way. The cliff's mouth was wide enough for her to dodge aside unharmed, and he would just have to make sure that he threw the man into the jaws of darkness far, far below.
"Hika! Stop, let go of him!" he heard Senritsu yell. There seemed to be no traces of fear in her voice, only alarm, like an open wound.
Hika didn't know that he had been closing his eyes until he opened them; and when he did, he found himself at the very tip of the ravine, and the man was there below him, hanging on for dear life as one hand still held the boy's, and another was gripping a jutting rock that was but a few inches away from Hika's face.
"Filthy-!" the man was screaming, growling, and that was the only word the man said that Hika could recognize; the man was lost; here was an animal.
Hika, in vain, tried to pry the man's remaining grip on his hand with all his strength. Hika gasped, gritted his teeth, until he saw sparks play at the back of his eyes. He felt the pain now. His body began to ache, and he knew that he was losing. The man would drag both of them down, down, never to be seen again…
Senritsu was playing once more. It was a different tune, and it sent Hika's skin crawling. He never knew Senritsu could play a piece like that, like the sound of nails scratching a rough surface, like the piercing laughter of a thousand imps. It could've been noise, but it wasn't. There was a certain tune to it, and his blood ran cold.
"Wha—"
Hika opened his eyes despite the pain, and looked down at the man. It was as if a veil had been lifted off the man's eyes and now they were wide, petrified, and his mouth was open as though he had seen a ghost.
A ghost.
"Brother—" the man began, and he choked, and he tried to speak. No sound came out. The man's eyes were focused yet blank. He was looking above Hika's shoulder. Hika fought to follow the man's gaze. There was no one there.
"It's your fault, brother, your fault—" the man was wailing again, grunting, growling, and that was when Hika noticed that the man's grip was loosening. With renewed strength, Hika pried the man's fingers from his wrist. He succeeded.
Like a lost soul, the man howled as he plunged into the unknown, into to the abyss. An echo of a lifeless thud filled the expanse. There was a flutter of wings, and tiny black birds burst into the sky upon the sound of the impact of body hitting rock. The screaming stopped.
Hika was weary and barely conscious when Senritsu came to his side and aided him to sit up, and then to his feet. The girl was surprisingly strong. She was a Hunter, after all, capable of looking after herself—
"Are you all right?" came Senritsu's voice.
Hika shook the weariness from his eyes. He turned to her. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah."
"Me too."
There was a faint smile on Senritsu's lips. "Now who saved who?"
Hika wanted to roll his eyes. "Shut up, Sen."
"Up you go."
They were carefully making their way down the grotto when all of a sudden, the sky before them lit with bursts of colors, different colors in different sizes, shapes, and dimensions—the fireworks.
"Look at that," Hika said, a hint of bitterness in his voice. "They decided to continue the party after all."
"Business is business," Senritsu said simply. She was supporting Hika, but the boy was trying his manliest best to keep to his feet and his own weight on himself.
But the two children were silent for a while. They watched the fireworks, the fireworks which they had wished to see from the very beginning, and it was not short of what they had expected. The wind carried the sound of claps and cheers of the onlookers a distance away when the show ended.
"Hika," Senritsu's voice suddenly filled the quieting air. "We've killed him."
"Sen?"
"We've killed that man, didn't we?"
"He could've killed us, Senritsu. Don't be silly. It was self-defense." Hika felt the pain return to his body. "Self-defense."
Senritsu was silent for a while.
"They'll find the body in the morning."
Hika turned to her, understanding. He nodded. "It's time to leave Nima."
Hika was limping his way beside the girl when a thought popped into his mind. There was something, and he knew that it was not his conscience, that was tugging at him.
"Senritsu?"
"What?"
"Let's not talk about this ever again, okay?"
Senritsu's doll eyes looked at him. "Well…" she was reluctant at first. "Okay."
A lump formed in his throat. "You promise?"
But Senritsu no longer spoke. The girl seemed lost in thought, and she had left Hika's side to walk a small distance in front of him, and she was clutching at her flute. In the shadows of the pale moon, it looked like she was clutching a metal serpent.
A/N: Bring in the violins! Er, I meant, violence… erk. Well, it's been a while since I wrote an "action" sequence. You can call this a quasi-action sequence. There were no ray guns or blasts involved. Also, no cotton candy was harmed during the writing process of this fic.
Whut.
Send in those comments and reviews! ^^
Cheers!
DW-chan :3
