A/N: Not one guess about why Stella keeps fainting, huh? That's pretty depressing. Oh well. There's a big hint in the… third paragraph after the first partition.
Disclaimer: I do not have the energy right now to come up with something witty and fun for you to read, so I'm just going to say this as painlessly as possibly: I do not own Trinity Blood.
"Ha! Ha! De! Wait for me!"
"Come on, Stel! It's the biggest I've seen yet."
A man with a slightly scruffy brown hair and laughing blue eyes sat down on the Congo boat, draping an arm about his mate's shoulders. The woman, with long, wavy, dark brown hair laughed slightly at the teenager and child's antics and placed a gentle hand on her mate's.
"They're little ruffians." She said, giggling as the children reached their hands into the water.
"They're all ours." The man replied, burying his nose into her hair.
"They should not lean over so." A cold, emotionless voice said.
Both adults turned their attention away from each other to a small child sitting close to them, on another bench seat. They both had their own looks of disgust: the mother's narrowed eyes and crinkled nose, a small hand gripping her husband, her rock for support, while the father's was a sneer, holding his mate close to him.
"Oh, and how would you know, Lia?" The mother asked coldly, not really paying attention to parental instinct to protect her children from falling, but just to make the girl with white hair wrong.
"My name is Lyisistrata, and you will address me as such. And how I know is," an evil glint entered her eyes, "because I'm going to do it."
Before either parent could stop her, she was up and dashing across the boat. There was a surprised half-yell, a woman's scream, and two men's outraged cry. The boy, Demetry jumped to the railing, only to be pulled back by the crew.
"Hold him back!" The captain shouted. "There are 'gaters in them waters!"
The woman muffled a sob as she turned away from her son, still fighting to get to his sister, by hiding her face in her husband's shirt. The man moved away from his mate and slapped the child who had done the deed, so hard, she flew across the boat. The three family members held each other as they watched for the floating brown head.
The little girl's mouth was filled with water when she surfaced. She screamed and held out her hands, but the only one on that side of the boat was Lysistrata, waving pleasantly and throwing little white flowers into the water as she plucked the petals off. The girl's feet slipped again.
She opened her eyes to the murky world, to be met by pain. Alligators were after her, big and scary. She surfaced, and saw a thin ray of hope. An old tree limb, held out like the hand of a good friend, reached out over.
Stella awoke in a cell much like the one she had been in before. She mentally sighed without opening her eyes. That again? What's with that dream? Is it trying to tell me something? As she slowly opened her eyes and lifted her body from the cold stone ground, however, she could more clearly see the differences. There was no window, and no lamps in the cell; all light came from small gas lamps (which filled the air with the scent of kerosene) out in the hall. There were bars on the entrance of her pen, and three steel walls, though the steel walls in this cell had dents roughly the size of human hands in them. Last (and most disturbing of all) she could see men in other cells, looking at her lecherously.
Stella suppressed a shudder of revulsion and stood up. She crossed her arms in front of her and snorted. Couldn't even put me in the bed, if you can call it that. The cot was little more than a wire frame with a brown-red cloth stretched taunt over it.
All at once, she realized why there was no window. She was back underground. Her mouth suddenly went dry and her body began shaking. The back of her neck burned in the shape of a small square. She gulped down air, but still red dots were swimming before her eyes as if she was drowning. She vaguely felt herself falling, and heard the resounding crack of her skull against the metal of the bed. Then, she saw and heard no more.
Abel's calves burned and his knees cracked as he walked briskly across the lawns of the church's grounds. A gentle breeze scratched achingly against his cheeks, which burned from standing so long exposed to the elements of cold. He had been looking for William Wordsworth all day, but thus far, there had been no sign of the Professor.
"Hey! Abel! Where're you going?" Leon Jr. jogged to keep up with Abel's long stride, which, although he had been traveling quickly all day, had not broken for a single trip, fall, or stumble.
"Looking for my dear friend the Professor, and the one time I need him, he isn't setting off some explosion somewhere so I can find him!" Abel grumbled, yelling the last few words.
Leon skidded to a stop. "The Professor? He just got back from the university; he's in his room now."
Abel let out a groan-scream as he turned on his heel and walked in the complete opposite direction that he had been traveling in.
"James, if you wouldn't mind, I would like you to take these notes to the…"
There was a loud (louder than what was strictly necessary) rapping on William's door. He stared at the door for no more than a moment before whoever it was, was at it again, knocking continuously.
He moved as quickly as a sixty year old could and undid the bolt that was on the door. In front of him stood a very annoyed looking, silver-haired preist. He smiled warmly.
"Ah, Abel, what brings you to my humble abode this fine day?"
"It is not such a fine day for someone who has been looking high and low for you." Abel said, still slightly snappish from walking around in the cold, before-snow wind.
The old professor frowned and stepped aside, noticing for the first time that Abel's cheeks were rubbed raw; the day was not that terrible out. He must have been in and out of the breeze all day. As Abel stepped inside and made his way to the table (which Walter was motioning to), William called to James.
"James, scratch that. Get a fire going and some hot tea of the table. Don't forget the sugar… don't look at me like that! I know I'm not supposed to have sugar, it's not for me!" William had been talking calmly until he got to the sugar part; getting old was not fun.
Abel had removed his glasses and was massaging the bridge of his nose. William sat down with that old man's easiness that bespoke he had experienced it all in his day and was sure that he would be able to help the younger (though not literally, of course, just emotionally) man.
James strode back in on his long legs and placed a tray with two steaming cups of brown tea, two small cups of two different types of sugars and a small cup of cream. As William took care of Abel's tea (under the watchful eye of James), he took a brief moment to look at the china. White with gold rims and flowers of intertwining gold and pink. Slightly feminine, but it had been a gift from Kate (whom he never had taken to calling 'Cardinal'). William put the cup in Abel's cold hand and took a sip of his own (it was too strong without the sugar).
"Now my friend, what is it that yow needed me for?"
Abel swallowed a sigh. There was so much that he wanted to say, but he feared that there was too little time. Although Abel had to be at least nine-hundred and eighty years older than him, Walter seemed to possess knowledge of people that Abel did not. Of course, only fifty of those years were spent around actual people, and those people were often the people who found talking of past missions and efficiency of different weapons and battle tactics as fun conversation or it was spent around people who could speak tirelessly of God, quoting pages upon pages of the bible as answers to simple questions. The men, for ever since the death of Noelle and Esther's queening, there was only one woman apart of AX that was not Lady Catherine or Cardinal Kate (and Abel strongly believed the conversation he was about to have was not fitting to have with them) was currently locked behind bars on ridiculous grounds.
"It's Stella…"
William's face broke into a grin, the laugh lines around his eyes folding into themselves; long ago he had decided that life was meant to live (though he still liked to contribute to the scientific community for the 'good of future generations') and he could almost never be found frowning (in fact, it was a call for serious warning if the light of laughter left his eyes for even a minute). "I had a feeling it would be."
Abel frowned for a moment before deciding to let the insinuating comment drop. "She's fainted again."
William frowned. He had heard the last time Stella had fainted. She had a small seizure beforehand and then had gone limp. "Oh?"
Abel nodded eagerly. "From what I know, she's never had a problem before, and she would have told me if she has epilepsy."
William paused. "Are you sure, Abel? She does keep a lot of secrets to herself."
Abel shook his head quickly. "No. She's already told me her greatest secret, and she would have told me for safety's sake if nothing else."
William leaned back in his chair with an old groan, feeling his shoulders and back pop as he did so. His scientist's brain was already working on devouring the problem at hand. First step: define the variables. "Where was she this time?"
Abel thought back to the report he had received from Tres earlier that morning and later in the day. "The first time she fainted was when the guards were bringing her down again into the cells…"
"Ah! There you go. Her mind is subconsciously rebelling against captivity." William grinned broadly, certain he had found the answer.
Abel shook his head. "This afternoon, the camera in her cell detected movement. She woke up, looked around and fainted again."
William frowned. Then he seemed to think again. "How about the dark? Was it dark all three times?"
Abel shook his head. "The hallways are well-lit and even if they weren't, Stella would be able to use the slightest bit of light to her advantage with her night vision."
"Hmm…" William put his face on top of his fisted hand, the thumb resting on the ledge of his bottom lip, in the classic 'thinking pose'. Suddenly he shot off the chair, smiling with certainty. "I've got it!"
Abel looked at him warily, hoping that he was right this time. "Well?"
"Each time she fainted, she was either being led underground or underground, right?"
Abel nodded, the absolute abstractness of his questions raising his hopes.
"And when you first came to the sight of the house where her little sister was, you said that there were stones around that wire buried, and that there was a mark where a bed a machinery had been, which of course mean that the girl, Lysistrata, was held in the basement."
Abel nodded again.
William's smile began receding from his face. "Which corresponds with the reports from several of the victims including Mau, who was proven sane?"
Once again, Abel nodded.
William's face set in a grim line. "I know what's wrong with Stella."
"What?" Abel asked loudly, resisting the urge to move forward and force the answer out of the old man.
William turned his back to Abel, looking out the window. Finally, he uttered quietly, "It's far worse than any case I've ever heard of. Traumatic shock."
"What?" Abel cried. "That can't be! She's been fine since we got back from the Empire, besides being in jail."
William shook his head sadly, becoming more and more certain with each passing moment. "We haven't been able to watch her closely enough, and she's been left alone to often; too much time for her to think."
Abel became quiet; the Professor was certain, and until he had reason to believe otherwise, he was going to trust in what his friend said. "So what does this mean for Stella?" Abel asked gravely.
William turned his head towards Abel, and in the dying light of sunset, Abel could finally see how much time had aged his friend. "It means that she is in far more danger than the Inquisition could ever put her in."
A/N: Woot! A long time in coming, but the chapter came out good. Review!
P.S. I'm going to do a story as soon as this story is done about what happened to all our favorite characters in the thirty years Abel was gone. A chapter or two on everyone: Esther, Catherine, Hugue, Vanessa, Virgil, and all the rest. Of course, Leon gets his own story. What do you guys think?
