Disclaimer: I don't own Escaflowne. I never get to own anything - blah.


Chapter Three

A Little Fire

After Hitomi made her call to the Safewalk office, she stood in the entrance of the building and waited for her escort. She wasn't surprised when Van showed up, but she was surprised by the girl he had with him. 'Why couldn't he have come on his own?' she wondered angrily.

"Hi. Are you Hitomi?" Van asked in deep mellow tones. Then he smacked his gum against his front teeth and gave her a heart-stopping smile. His cheeks were so thin, she didn't imagine before that he almost had a dimple in his left cheek.

Her heart quickened, but she managed to smile, nod, and collect her backpack from off the floor.

The girl who was with him looked … bored. She wore a Safewalk hoodie and she buried her hands in the pockets. Hitomi despised the moments that she had to spend evaluating her, because those were precious seconds that should have been spent looking at Van, but she suspected that she might be a form of competition since she was already acquainted with Van. The girl had dark eyes and the most attractive splatter of freckles across her nose, but her face did not smile and her eyes did not laugh. Hitomi found herself rejecting the idea that she had a significant relationship with Van and turned herself completely towards him.

"I'm Van," he said, "and this is Merle. Where are we taking you?"

"The South End Dorms," Hitomi answered cheerfully.

"Wonderful," he said, and there was something in his voice that made it sound like it really was wonderful. Those were the farthest dorms from the science building they picked her up from. Was he really excited to be taking her all that way? That seemed too good to be true. She was probably imagining the catch in his voice. He probably sounded like that all the time.

As they started walking, the wind picked up. Van and Hitomi walked side-by-side on the pavement while Merle fell slightly behind them. It was getting cold though and her breath froze in the air.

Hitomi shivered and said out loud, "Wow, it's cold. I wish I brought my gloves."

"Van," Merle called from behind. "Since it's so cold, why don't you link arms with Hitomi? Maybe you could even hold her hand in your pocket as we walk. It's a really long way to the dorms."

Hitomi felt distinctly uncomfortable, since it clearly sounded like Merle was making fun of her, but decided to turn to see how Van reacted to this statement.

His head was turned and he was looking back at Merle, like he thought her suggestion was funny rather than alarming.

"Let's hurry, shall we?" he said, quickening his pace.

Hitomi skipped a little and forced herself to catch up with Van, but when she turned around, she saw that Merle had slowed her step in response to Van's request. Soon they were out of earshot, but Van slowed down to give Merle a chance to catch up.

"We don't always get along, Merle and I, but it's Safewalk rules that all teams have to be made up of guy/girl partnerships. It's because girls like you are afraid to walk with two guys. If a guy and a girl go with them they're supposed to be more comfortable."

"What about the guys? Are they more comfortable?"

"Ah, but they don't call as much. Actually, most of the time when I've escorted guys, it's because they need help carrying their library books to their room," he laughed.

"Are you serious?"

"Always," he said, giving her another flirtatious smile.

By that time, Merle had caught up and passed them. "Come on," she snorted. "I want to get back to the office and get a coco, so let's move."

Van smiled and obeyed.

That was the end of Van's dialogue and in truth Hitomi was glad. She found his presence slightly overpowering and in the back of her mind there was a little voice that warned her that if she chatted him up too much he would ask what her poster was a picture of just to make conversation. Her fear of being discovered as a pathetic groupie was enough to keep her tongue tied. She would try again later to talk to him.

They dropped her off in the lobby of the dorms and headed out again with little more than a wave. It looked like Van would have taken her all the way to her room or maybe even said a few friendly words, but Merle's pager was buzzing which meant that they had another job.

Hitomi smiled and forced herself to turn around and walk with confidence up the stairs. At least at the end, she wanted to look a little cool, so she didn't watch him leave the building or cross the street. But she thought about it.

Once she was back in her room, she was much too wound up to sleep. Instead, she took off her winter gear and pinned up her poster. She had been thinking about where she could put it since the day before. Finally, she decided that the only place was on one of the sliding doors on her closet. That way, she could at least hide it if … well, if someone she didn't want to see it happened to be in her room. But that was just wishful thinking. Van probably had a girlfriend. Actually, he probably had a collection of girlfriends. She didn't have a chance with him. So, he definitely wouldn't be visiting her dorm room and there was nothing to worry about.

After that, she put on her pyjamas and got into bed, but she had no intention of trying to sleep. She hooked up her laptop and snuggled with it instead. Once she had it open, she went directly to her blog and wrote all about her first night with The Occult's Addict. She wasn't sure if she wanted to talk about calling Safewalk to have her vampire walk her home. In the end, she wrote it out, but ended up saving her description of the evening on her hard drive and leaving it out of her blog entry.

She checked her email, wrote a few of her friends back home and then surfed the web.

It was awhile before she made her way to ReadyEyes808's blog, but when she finally did, she found that she was very interested in what he had to say. The title was 'Step into the Confessional'.

He started out, "Forgive me for I have sinned. I'm always sinning, but tonight I felt worse about it than usual. A few posts ago, I mentioned that I saw an angel. Tonight, I met her. You should have seen her eyes. Before I thought that she radiated goodness, but now that I've seen her more closely, I see that I was wrong. It was more like innocence. Once I carefully examined her, it was clear that she didn't have a boyfriend. She has never had a boyfriend. Her mind has never been consumed by the flavour of lust or want or desire. Never felt hate, jealousy, obsession, or been spoil by too much of anything poignant.

"For someone like me, the combination was far more devastating than if she had been good – like my first impression.

"For one thing, if she had been good I would have been able to play my true role. I wouldn't have had to hide any of myself from her. Women who are truly good are wonderful for men like me. Throwing yourself on the mercy of a good woman is a precious experience, because a woman like that knows exactly how to comfort you. I'll spend an entire night from midnight to six telling a good woman what I am and she patiently listens and offers comfort at all the correct moments. It would be a perfect situation, except that she always wants to reform me. But an innocent girl somehow isn't tipped off that there's something wrong with me just by looking at me. And she somehow inspires me to be ten times more rakish than I usual. Why? Because I know I can get away with it.

"And that's why I'm a liar. Wouldn't it be wonderful to meet a girl you're interested in and have the confidence to just be yourself? To just move like you naturally do, speak the way you do, look the way you do? That's all a dream to me, because everything I do is a lie. I have to hide my eyes which look unidentifiably tragic. Unless I make a conscious effort to the contrary – they look sad – hopeless. Why? Because I am completely without hope. But tonight, around this innocent girl – my charade was worse than even I am liable to be. Even my best friend noticed and commented that I was acting like I was on the prowl.

"And why shouldn't I be on the prowl? Even though I'm young? Even though I want a girlfriend? And even though I'm alone and I hate it?

"Because all of that is over for me. Love is dead. And only heartbreak and ruin could follow my relationship with this girl if it should grow. In my mind, I can see what she would turn into if we got together. I'm not a fortune teller, but I can see it as easily as if it was already the past.

"She's sitting in my armchair at six o'clock in the morning. She hasn't slept all night because I wouldn't let her and she's smoking a cigarette. There are purple lines under her eyes – I can feel her exhaustion – but I don't feel sorry for her, because she didn't leave when she had the chance. Her wrists look pathetically slender as she moves her hand to and from her mouth. She's lost twenty or thirty pounds since I first saw her. The scent of apple blossoms is gone and what was once pure what has turned a hideous grey. If she hadn't gotten involved with me, who knows what bright future she would have experienced, but now that she's fallen under my shadow – she's a little more than a corpse.

"Since that's my guess of our future, I won't pursue her, no matter how much I'm drawn to her. She's like a beautiful but blank piece of paper that I have no business writing upon. I have nothing to offer. Not friendship or love or devotion …

"There's no love in this world and practically no life … not for me. This place becomes more and more of a wasteland under my eyes each day. And the worst part is that there is no end. My life is a cage of self torment, but I can't let up – I deserve it. And there is no way she deserves to be stripped of everything about her that was gentle and decent.

"I'll never meet that girl again."

As Hitomi read his post, her heart was filled with such a deep sorrow that she almost cried. She couldn't believe that anyone felt that desperate – that anyone despaired that much. She loaded in her comment as soon as possible. She had to be gentle and encouraging. She couldn't allow anyone to feel this depressed. It was against her very nature.

"Dear ReadyEyes808," she wrote and as she typed she tried to envision a human being at the end of that name, even though it was an alias.

"I wish desperately that I was there beside you tonight. I wish that I could soothe you and comfort you. The voice you use in your writing makes me feel desolate. I wish I could shelter you from your feeling of self loathing and show you a brighter way. I don't know you very well, but I have felt your friendship across the circuits and wires of the internet, so I don't know the person you're talking about. I only know the one who comes to comment on my blog – who has visited more consistently than any of my old friends from high school. And even though it hasn't been much to you, it has been one of the high points of my day. I wouldn't even mind meeting you in real life. I'm sure we would make excellent friends. Goodnight, my sweet. Don't forget, there are always people who care what happen to you, so don't despair."

She signed her alias and wished that there was more that she could do. But that happened to be everything she had.


Hitomi woke up the next morning with her laptop stuck between her bed and the wall. She had barely managed to close it before she drifted off to sleep the night before. So, she must have kicked it off the bed during the night. Now, she was pulling it out and apologizing to it like it was a person.

"I'm sorry Lappy," she mumbled. "I'll always set you on the floor nicely before I zonk out from now on. I promise."

After her apology, she turned to see Van's glorious face and the three perfect bite marks down the side of his neck.

"And good morning to you, too, Van. Thanks for watching over me last night. Today will be a perfect day because you were the last person I saw last night and the first thing I saw when I woke up … or something like that," she said with a playful shrug of her shoulders.

After that, Hitomi went down to the cafeteria and had a bowl of Frosted Flakes in a cup. She didn't even realize that she was alone until she happened to see Yukari having breakfast with some people at a different table. Hitomi didn't even have the sense to feel awkward when Yukari's eyes met hers. Instead, she merely gulped down the rest of her breakfast and went back to her room.

It was Saturday, so she had a few errands to run. They weren't much, but she needed to get a load of laundry done in the Laundromat and then she needed to visit a supermarket. Her dorm room was pathetically empty of all snacks. Then she had a paper to write. So, her day was so booked that she didn't even think her life devoid of friends as she hauled a bag of dirty clothes to the elevator.

"Besides," she reassured herself. "I am part of a student group and the rest … doesn't really matter." She had great plans to call for another Safewalk after the next meeting with The Occult's Addict. And the thought of that was enough to carry her through her day.

Hitomi read one of her text books while her laundry flipped around and around in the machines. She had been lucky to get a machine and happy that she only had one load of underwear to do.

Then she went on her little shopping excursion.

Needless to say, it was awhile before she flipped open her laptop to check her email. Maybe one of her friends had responded to her email. But as Outlook loaded, there was only one message and it was from ReadyEyes808.

"01PearlMoon," it started out. "I suppose the one at the beginning of your name must mean that you are the only pearl moon. Sorry, I'm cheesy early in the morning, but your comment on my blog meant so much to me. You sound like one of those 'good girls' I talked about in my entry. I know it's probably way out there, but you said you wouldn't mind meeting me. I know meeting people online is scary, but I'll tell you what. If you're ever at the UofA (University of Asteria), please let me know and I'll tell you how to find me. I wouldn't mind meeting you either."

Then he signed it, "Love ReadyEyes808."

"Whoa!" Hitomi gasped.

That was where she went to school.


Author's Notes: I'm a bum. I freely admit that 'yes' I am a bum. The thing was ... well ... a lot of stuff. Anyway, thank you to anyone who reads this. I'm been so neglectful and bad, but I've thought of a way to move this story. I had no beta reader, so there may be a lot of errors. I tried to spot them, but I may have missed a few. I just wanted to get writing something so bad. Please review. I haven't had any reviews in ages. Love, Sapphirefly