It had all been too good to be true. The tiny thought that had burrowed like poison in Gourry's mind exploded in full force and took over. Happiness could not be jarred, stored and kept. And the toll for obtaining it would be paid. Only now Lina would also pay by tying her destiny to his. And the knowledge crushed him. They were stuck in this strange place, and Sylphiel alone was facing down powerful enemy forces to protect their children. One person against how many Mazoku? Sylphiel may be strong but her odds of success were slim. She was also not Lina. Gourry tried to find some glimmer of hope to grasp but the despair was stronger. They would lose their son and daughter because people like him did not deserve happy endings.
Something within him shattered. He had fought the thoughts for so long that he could not anymore. He was not worthy of any of this, and he had made it worse by even trying. And now Midas and Aurelia were real people who would suffer. Because they'd had the misfortune of being born to him. The shameful tint of the despair he felt paralyzed him. He knew someone worthy of them would keep fighting. But he couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't escape from the prison of his mind.
Lina was talking. She was brainstorming. Or trying to. She needed him. But he couldn't even look at her for fear that he would see the disappointment she must be feeling on her face. He needed to see it. He needed to own it. He had failed to protect them. Protect his family. It was what a father does. It was what he vowed to Lina he would always do. And he'd failed. And he didn't even have the courage to look at her anymore.
He had never been worthy of being her guardian. He'd been a fool to try.
Sylphiel fell forward and managed to get her hands in front of her so that her palms and knees took the brunt of the impact rather than her stomach. She looked up to see Xellos break the summoning circle she had created, and then he and Compa disappeared. There was a pause where it felt as though anything could happen. She could be attacked or left alone. And then a lump formed in her throat as she focused on the fact that there was no longer a gentle weight pressing on her back. She'd failed. She'd not gotten anyone back, and she'd not been able to stop the Mazoku from kidnapping the twins.
Then Lina, Gourry, Naga and the rest appeared around her, and Sylphiel's stomach twisted. As a healer who had been frustrated by the boundaries of mortal medicine many times, delivering the news that someone had lost a loved one was something she had practice in. But it never got easier. She ignored the ache in her knees as she sat up and steeled herself.
"Sylphiel!" Rick exclaimed as he came up beside her and helped her up. "Are you okay?"
"What just happened?" Marlena asked.
Connie looked around in fear as she said, "Where are we?"
But then came the question that Sylphiel was dreading as Lina said, "Where are my babies?"
Sylphiel closed her eyes. "They took them. I'm so sorry, I couldn't stop them!"
There was a wail unique to parents when they lost a baby. And hearing it never failed to chill Sylphiel to the core. That night was no different.
Xellos materialized on a different continent from the one he had just left, heady with a long sought victory after a string of dismal, costly failures. Finally! Finally he would have good news to share with Lord Greater Beast. Finally they would turn the tide in this war. They had the twins, and there was no way that Lina could travel to a place she'd never heard of to retrieve them. And even if she tried, he would have enough forewarning to whisk the twins away to a different continent.
Wobrant cried out as she put the infants on the floor and then disappeared back into the astral plane, but not out of Xellos's vision. Her injuries from handling the infants were severe, but she would recover. He looked at the floor, where both were glowing as they cried, and Xellos shuddered as he remembered the pain of being under their attack. He retreated to the astral plane himself, just to be sure, and then he breathed a sigh of relief. The wet nurses had gone to a nearby festival so there would be no awkward conversations about why the twins were glowing. For once the timing was fortuitous.
"What are we going to do about them?" Compa asked as he materialized beside Xellos.
Xellos smiled, "They'll get tired of crying eventually, or cry themselves to sleep. Then, supposedly, they'll stop glowing and allow one of the wet nurses to feed them. After that they'll settle down and quickly forget their parents."
"You know so much about humans." Compa said as he watched the babies from the safety of the astral plane. "And this mission was a wondrous success. Lord Xellos, I want to understand to better serve you. Why did you ask me to release the other humans from the world I had created? I thought you had intended them to die there."
That had been the sole mistake. But then, since obtaining the twins and not killing their parents was the objective, it was a minor one. Everyone had agreed that if killing the parents proved too troublesome to retreat. The Mazoku race had already taken enough losses. "Since Sylphiel could figure out how to summon you, she would have done it again immediately after we left. Our orders were not to fight. So I had to release the others to prevent a show down."
"What flawless reasoning."
"Indeed." Xellos said, "Now, keep an eye on the twins. I must give Lord Greater Beast an update."
Sylphiel had given Naga some sort of herbal concoction for the shakes and a recommendation that she slow down on the wine before she'd gone to lay down. After giving her a disdainful snort, Naga started walking straight to the wine cellar when she stopped in her tracks as she passed a room and saw Lina looking forlornly at a map. Naga quietly watched her for a moment as she sipped her tea, and then she quietly walked in and stood beside Lina.
"What's this?" Naga asked.
Lina barely reacted, and when she spoke it was slow and slurred. She was in shock. "I'm trying to figure out where they took them."
Naga pulled up a chair and looked at the map, and sighed, "It may be too soon. But Lina, if I were them I'd take them to a place in the Outer World so far from here that you'd never have a chance of finding them. They're gone. You're just going to have to accept that."
Tears leaked from Lina's eyes, and Naga froze. While she felt more clear headed than she usually did, she also didn't feel prepared for this. She remembered the draught that Sylphiel had prepared to calm Gourry down enough so he could sleep. "Hey, why don't we find Sylphiel and she can give you some of that stuff she gave Gourry?"
"I'll sleep when I damn well please." Lina snapped, "The last thing I want is to be like you, so miserable that I have to drink myself to sleep every night."
Naga reddened as her words hit below the belt. "I'm just trying to help! Keep that up and not even Gourry will want to deal with you."
"He already doesn't want to deal with me. He can't even look at me." Lina said.
"Huh?" Naga said.
"I lost them all, I miscalculated and I lost them all! He must hate me now for letting this happen!"
"Did he say that?"
"No, he hasn't said a word!" Lina said, "And he usually knows what to say when stuff like this happens."
"You don't know what he's thinking." Naga said as she grabbed Lina's arm, "Come on, you need some rest. I don't think you even know what you're saying anymore."
"No!" Lina said, her voice low and dangerous as she wrested her arm away, "I need to focus!"
"What?" Naga said.
"I will get them back! I will tear this world apart! My babies are so important that the Eternal Queen will fund every penny of every exhibition needed to get them back." Lina said, and Naga started to wonder for her sanity.
"But how?"
"A mother's instinct." Lina said as she stared at the map. "You need to leave. I need to focus. If it's quiet and I follow my instincts they will show me where they are!"
"Right." Naga said as she stood up and walked towards the door.
"Close the door behind you." Lina said.
Naga did, and then nearly bumped into Marlena, who had obviously been eavesdropping. The other woman wiped tears from her eyes, "Just give her time. She'll grasp at any straw. Just let her work through this her way."
"And when she sees it's pointless she'll give it up?" Naga asked.
Marlena looked at her sharply, "Pointless? I found my babies!"
"Years later!" Naga shot back.
"I regret the lost time." Marlena said, "But I found them!"
Marlena walked over to the nursery, leaving Naga in the hallway feeling unnerved. Yet when she started walking again, it was not to the wine cellar, but to Sylphiel's room. She knocked and waited to be invited in. When she opened the door she saw Sylphiel resting on the couch, a blanket pulled over her as Rick sat in a nearby chair. "Princess Naga," Sylphiel said, "Forgive me for not getting up, but I'm on bed rest as a precaution. I should be fine tomorrow."
"Don't mention it." Naga said, "And just call me Naga."
"What can we do for you, Naga?" Sylphiel asked, and Naga closed the door and felt her tongue stick to the top of her mouth as the words caught in her throat.
She'd never paid much attention to Sylphiel. She was so polite, polished, perfect and utterly boring that she'd barely spared her a second glance. Until now. Rick looked at Sylphiel questioningly, and then back at Naga as the silence became awkward, but Sylphiel did not seem put off by it. She just stared politely, waiting for her to speak.
Eventually the awkwardness of the silence became unbearable, and Naga said quickly, "You…both of you really. You lost more than anyone else in this cottage has!"
Both Sylphiel and Rick stiffened, and then Sylphiel said, "You mean our entire families and our hometown, Sairaag?"
"Yes! And here you are, moving on! You let yourselves love again. You have a baby on the way even! And the only person I've ever lost was my mother, and I can't even begin to imagine doing what the two of you have done."
"What have we done?" Rick asked.
"You opened yourselves to loving someone else!" Naga pointed out.
"And the pain that results should we lose them." Sylphiel finished quietly.
"Exactly." Naga said as she pointed a finger at her. Sylphiel cradled her stomach gently as Naga continued, "How can you do it?"
"Because, if we didn't, we would have lost a lot more." Sylphiel said.
"I don't need some saccharine filled…"
"For a few years after Sairaag was destroyed, I chased after a man who didn't love me."
That stopped Naga short. Even Rick was looking at Sylphiel as though she had sprouted a second head as Naga said, "There's a man you chased after who didn't love you?"
"Was he blind?" Rick asked.
Sylphiel smiled shyly, "He was already in love with someone else. And it's not as though he was around much. And that distance, it made it easier to believe that there could be something between us if it wasn't for her. I spent years in Saillune, waiting for him to wake up and return to me. But it was perfect, because he couldn't get too close. Not really. It wasn't until I actually put my plan to rebuild Sairaag into action that it caught up to me when the king tried to force me into an arranged marriage. So you see, by avoiding the pain by pursing love with someone who couldn't return it, I nearly lost my freedom. And if I couldn't love the person I was betrothed to, then I would have also lost the potential to be with someone I did love in the future."
"Oh," Naga said as she folded her arms across herself. "Well, I'd like to see my daddy try to force me to marry someone I don't want to."
"The cost is different for each person." Sylphiel said.
"I'm not trying to scare you," Naga said, "But if you lose that baby, will it have been worth it?"
"I thought about that when Deep Sea Dolphin attacked." Sylphiel said, "And the answer is yes. Because nothing can take away the memories of the joy that was shared with that person in the meantime."
"You are too good to be believed." Naga said as she turned around.
"Not really." Sylphiel said, "I just know that no matter what hurt life throws at me, I'm strong enough to bear it."
I'm not, Naga thought as she closed the door behind her and wondered why she'd wasted her time with that. The cost of not loving someone being too high. It was preposterous! What was she losing? Her family? As if they were worthy of her! Respect? It's not like she ever had much of it. Freedom? She'd had more freedom since she'd cut everyone off!
She stormed into the kitchen, and then stopped when she saw Moe sitting at the table nursing a glass of brandy. "What are you doing out of the nursery?"
"Well, I was hired to protect the twins. And now they're gone, so I don't have a job." He explained, the sorrow permeating his voice.
"Well, don't leave yet. Lina's communing with her instincts, convinced they will reveal the location of the twins to her and says she'll soon be gathering a search party to get them back. I'm sure she'll want you along."
"Go easy on her." Moe said.
Naga raised an eyebrow, and sighed, "How are you holding up?"
"I've been better. The thought of those babies being raised by Mazoku and away from their loving parents, that tears me apart. I keep thinking about what I could have done different. I shouldn't have stepped away from the nursery, or moved more quickly when we saw the Mazoku by the crib…"
"If only we could turn back time," Naga said as she picked up the bottle and looked at it, but Lina's words about drinking herself to sleep rang through her mind. "Don't torture yourself with it."
Moe looked at her, "As sad as I am to lose the twins, I must say, I'm relieved that you're okay. And that you didn't just take off. I'd thought I offended you."
"You didn't." Naga said quickly, though she couldn't help the blush that rose through her as she tried to figure out whether or not she should encourage him. Something Sylphiel said about being strong enough to survive any hurt life threw at her resurfaced. As though she was implying that she, Naga, was weak because she couldn't! And suddenly, letting someone close had become a challenge. Naga grinned as she sat the bottle down and turned to face him with a confident grin, "For once, I have no desire to leave. Maybe I finally found something worth staying for. Or someone worth staying with."
Compa continued to watch the twins from the astral plane, wondering when they would finally settle down. While he enjoyed the fear and anger they projected, he was also worried about what would happen should the wet nurses come home and see them in this state. But he didn't dare intervene. They were still glowing bright and golden.
An overpowering yearning tinged the feelings of fear and anger. With amusement Compa realized they were wanting their parents. It was an interesting emotion. Compa did not understand the desire that humans had for other humans, particularly the strong bond between parents and babies. While he was devoted to Lord Greater Beast, he didn't exactly desire her presence.
But then Compa realized something strange was going on, and with a start he could sense one of the twin's presence in the astral plane! But how? Humans couldn't travel through this plane. Unless something about their unique nature had given them the power to do so?
Compa hesitated. Should he leave to report this new development to Xellos? Should he try to stop them? But how could he do that without harming himself? Before he could think too much about it, a golden orb appeared in the room with the twins, and with a start Compa realized it connected the twin's room with the cottage where their parents resided!
AN: Well, spring break has been extended by a few weeks, so I'm going to be doing the work at home mom thing (thank goodness for telehealth) while doing some homeschooling activities with the kiddos. I don't know how this will affect how quickly I can get this thing out. Anyway, I hope everyone is safe and healthy and has plenty of toilet paper!
