Nanashi slept on, trapped within her own mind. She kept dreaming she could hear the others around her talking, even as far as dreaming they were there with her in the unknown void her mind resided in. She could not tell if these were dreams, or real or imagined. She heard them talking over her, but it was hard to tell who was talking as they all seemed to talk over her. The king's voice stood out over all of them.
"If I enter her mind, we can see why she's been asleep for so long and if I can pull her out of it," King Hayate insisted. She saw him in the void with her, but when she went to touch him, her hand passed right through him.
"We know why she's asleep," Kurama countered. He appeared with her, standing in front of King Hayate. Nanashi waved her hand in his face, trying to get his attention, but failed. "It's the warlock's curse that Haruto told us about. The blood bond curse. When you read his memories, you broke the curse, but nearly killed them both in the process."
"He recovered after a few hours though, she's been asleep for over two days and shows no sign or rousing," the king replied.
"I've been asleep?" she asked them. They did not hear her.
"I can enter her mind and see how we can awaken her," the king rationalized.
"If her mind is fragile, you could kill her. You almost did kill her," Kurama argued back.
"That was not my fault!" the king growled back. "How was I to know her father's sudden insistence in the middle of all that other drama would mean he was trying to get me to break the blood bond curse over him!"
"Oh, I guess you're completely innocent then," Kurama snapped annoyingly. "You just publicly allowed Hiei to be recaptured by Sakyo, who plans on killing him."
"You weren't in the room, you were busy chitchatting in the hallway when I told you to get her to her rooms!" the king retorted.
"I didn't need to be in the room to know you were all too willing to sacrifice him for her when he gave you the opportunity," Kurama growled back. "Besides, I'm not your king's guard, so I don't have to follow your orders."
Haruto appeared in between the two men. "Gentlemen, please stop this. Arguing over her will not help. I woke up on my own, she just needs more time to wake up on her own. Being a half human, half angel, it will take her longer to recover than a full blooded angel."
"What are you talking about?" Nanashi asked them. They did not hear her, which she could not understand why. "Where's Hiei? Why can't you just free him? Why are you letting Sakyo keep hold of him?" She threw a punch at King Hayate, only to see her hand travel right through him like he was some ghost.
She stared down at the ground in annoyance, huffing. King Hayate blinked out of the void, making her jump at his disappearance. Kurama did the same. She saw Haruto stayed in her mind, making her wish she could talk to him, that he could hear her.
"I don't blame you for being asleep so long," he said. "It's a good way to avoid hearing the two of them argue. Or the queen argue. Or Jiro or Yasha argue over what to do with you and me and Hiei and Sakyo." He spoke to her forlornly. "We only want you to wake up," he said to her.
"I want to," she answered. "Please, I want to, but I don't know how."
He kept right on talking, not hearing a single word she said. "I'm sorry for how I stopped from going after Sakyo, but King Hayate says I did the right thing. You would not have been able stop him from taking Hiei. Kurama thinks it was a ploy to get you to follow after them so Younger Toguro could kill you like he wanted to after you killed his brother," Haruto continued.
"I witnessed it, Hiei's offer to take your place even though King Hayate insisted you were under his protection, so he could not give you up to Sakyo. The rich versus the powerful. Sakyo made him look almost like a power mad tyrant." He shook his head. "'Take me in her place,' was what Hiei said the moment the room had gone quiet. Sakyo was excited to take that offer as soon as he made it. King Hayate tried to not allow it, but reluctantly agreed. It looked like a man letting his brother go to the slaughter."
She listened to Haruto ramble on, wishing she could say something back to him. She did not bother to speak at him anymore, knowing he would not hear her anyway.
"You went after them, and I knew I had to stop you someway. I knew the risk that if I had King Hayate read my mind without warning him about the blood bond curse hanging over me and you, it could kill us both, but it could also break the curse and free us. Telling someone something and having your memories read are luckily two different enough things for us. I saw the opportunity to stop you and free us both. Thankfully it did. I am your father."
She gasped at him, staring at him in disbelief.
"I am an angel, not a fallen one, but one sent on a mission. Much like Kaze was. My mission was to protect your mother," he kept explaining himself. She was unsure if he even knew she could hear him. "She ran away from home at a young age, to escape her abusive mother who favored her sister. She reached the city of Alaric far in the north, the one where demons live in a part of some of the neighborhoods. She worked just enough to keep herself alive, jobs she would not be proud of if she were alive today. She fell in with a demonic gang, got noticed by one warlock among them in particular. He read her fortune on a whim, and discovered she had a most interesting destiny ahead of her: her descendants were destined to change the world and start a dynasty that would last generations.
"The warlock took an avid interest in her, taking her into his home and under his care and protection. She also had the interest of The Great Hawk Spirit in my realm. This full blooded human needed freed from the warlock's influence and away from him. He was both evil and ambitious. He could not be allowed to let his bloodline intermingle with hers.
"I was tasked to go to her a guardian angel, which was why she could see me when humans can't normally see angels among them. I told her what I was and what I was sent to do. She did not believe me at first, but did once I revealed my wings to her. She would not go with me though. The warlock had her enthralled to him. She had fallen in love with him. He wanted to be the father of her children, to have his descendants be the ones as part of that prophecy.
"One night, they had gotten into a fight, so she came to me battered and bruised. I healed her, and then... one thing led to another, and you were conceived... You know by now how the process is goes...
"The next day, I went with her to confront the warlock, to tell him she was no longer going to be with him anymore. He sensed your conception by first and told us, furious that I had father a child off you when he had tried so hard and failed. He cursed us before I got the chance to defend us. He bound me and then went after your mother. He knocked your mother out and then took all of her memories of the past year away from her. He magicked her away after that, despite how much I pleaded with him to bring her back. He then cursed me with a blood bond curse to never tell her or anyone who I was to her or to you. If I did, with the nature of blood bond curses, I would die and anyone who shares my blood would die.
"He knocked me out after that, too. I woke up cold and alone on the streets. Much to my shock, he had also taken my wings away from me, thus trapping me in the realm, unable to fly myself back to the heavenly realm that is run by the Great Hawk Spirit. I recovered my strength and then went after that warlock, killing him in his sleep at the first opportunity I got.
"Then sought out your mother, remembering where she was from. I got myself to her hometown eventually. I had to also do somethings I am not proud of. I figured if I could get her to fall for me once, I could get her to fall in love with me just like I was in love with her. Once I got there, however, I found out you were born by then and your mother had passed away. I stayed in that town though, for you. I wanted to be close to you, even though I knew I could never tell you who I was because of the blood bond curse.
"Only one person in all those years ever guessed at who I really was to you. Hiei. He figured it out, and I told him to take you away. To get you away from Sakyo. To marry you if that was what it would take.
"I never imagined what would happen after that, after you left to save Hiei after Sakyo had taken him. That you would end up with a pair of wings of your own after rescuing an angel who had failed at his own mission. And his weapon. And become someone of value to the king himself. To even be engaged to be married to the king's cousin."
He paused after that, looking somberly around his surroundings that she could not see. "Wake up for us. I know you can. I know you can figure this out."
After all that confession that she had watched and listened from him, Haruto blinked out of existence for her. "Come back!" she called out. She waited for what felt like minutes. "Someone, come back," she grumbled.
No one did, even as she looked around herself in this nonexistent abyss she was trapped in. She could not even reach her wind serpent, for it was asleep when she was asleep. She huffed, sitting back down on the ground, even though it was same looking as the air, walls, and sky around her. She thought about Haruto's confession, her mother, the dead warlock who had placed those curses upon them all. Maybe this was another one of those curses, her being stuck in a mental prison of who knows where.
"Great Mother," she swore, echoing the words of Yasha. She missed him, but not most of all.
"My child," a voice echoed behind her.
Nanashi gasped, turning around to see a large hawk standing before her, as if coming from nowhere. She stared boldly at it, unblinking and unsure what to do. Coming to her senses, she rolled over and bowed low before the other worldly being. "Your..." she stumbled, unsure how to properly address her.
"Mother," the Great Hawk Spirit said before her, bowing herself low before Nanashi, wings spread out wide and low before her. When the Great Hawk Spirit straightened, Nanashi sat up on her knees, not sure what to do. "Rise, my child." Nanashi did as she was bid. "Approach." She took a few steps closer, standing at a formal distance from the being before her. "Closer, so I can look at you." Nanashi stood before her, trying not to tremble. She could feel her eyes studying her over. "I can't see much of anything of your father in you, beyond your wings. I suppose that's the doing of the warlock who magicked you all in his vengeance, as you finally have found out about now that the king has inadvertently broken the blood bond curse over you and your father. But your mother is displayed abundantly in you.
"You have served me well since you got your wings pulled out of you and inherited the wind serpent from Kaze. You even took up the mantle of completing his mission from me when he failed in it." The Great Hawk Spirit stepped closer to her, brushing her large beak affectionately over her cheek. "Yet you've chosen to stay here, on the precipice of life and death, lingering here for days. You cannot stay here, and you should not chose death, unless you wish to evade the prophecy made on your mother. You are her only child, so you must live on."
"I don't chose to be here," Nanashi started. "I want to leave, I want to wake up, but I don't know how. How do I wake up?"
The Great Hawk Spirit let loose a sort of a bird like purr. "You have two choices. Come with me to the death and the afterlife. Or send me away, fall asleep here, and wake up back in the world of the living."
"I want to live," Nanashi insisted rapidly. "I want to live, I want-"
"Good," the Great Hawk Spirit's eyes sparkled in a smile before her. "Before I go then, I need you to relay a message for me to the king. Since he had befriended your Hiei, King Hayate has been wondering about something about him in particular; something he has no way of proving. Tell the king his suspicion is correct."
"Suspicion about what?" Nanashi asked curiously.
The Great Hawk Spirit's eyes sparkled before her. "The king will know," she insisted vaguely. "Now, my child, when I leave you, lay down here and go to sleep. Once you do, you will awake in the mortal realm, where you belong."
With that, the Great Hawk Spirit came ever closer to her, wrapping her wings around her in an affectionate hug. When she pulled away, she was gone, just like the others had been gone. Nanashi looked around for her, trying to see where she might have gone.
"Lay down and sleep," she murmured to herself. She did not feel tired, nor hunger, nor thirsty for that matter, even as she thought about how she should have felt those things for as long as she was asleep.
She sighed, laying herself faithfully down on the ground and closed her eyes, awaiting sleep to claim her.