A/N Welcome to my revised version of One Night for the Heart. There are 9 chapters written, 5 updated, but I'm still touching up 6 and 7. They'll come fast, I promise. Please comment or follow for updates!

A/N

This is a direct sequel to SuilSaifir's one-shot "Home is Where the Heart Is"—Chapter 5 in Black & Gold 30 Kisses. (Found here: fanfiction dot net slash s/4837583/5/Black-Gold-30-Kisses Or check my Favorites list in my profile.) Everything I've written spans from her idea. It's only 3k words. I think it's a great read, but I'll summarize it in the next paragraph too.

Okay, so to summarize that story, Van and Hitomi have been married for seven months, but they never consummate their marriage for whatever reason (Van is a stiff). Five months into their marriage, Zaibach & Basram attack Fanelia while Van is away. So he's been warring away for the last two months, but is presently in Palas for some war council, pining away for a wife whose fate he doesn't know. Hitomi, meanwhile, treks eleven days through the wilderness, fake pregnant, to show up with important intel from back home. Van is upset she's pregnant, she removes a belly pillow in front of the entire cast, then delivers her intel before passing out from exhaustion. Van carries her to his room, they almost kiss, but then they get interrupted by soup. He returns to the war council to integrate this new intel into a new maneuver. Hitomi thinks she'll not see him until the end of the war and eats her soup.

The premise of that story was just too much for my mind to resist, especially as the wife of a soldier. Major military maneuvers take time to prepare; they don't just happen at the flip of a switch. And, after Hitomi traveled for so long, she needs longer than an afternoon nap and some soup. Combine this with a soldier-king lonely for his wife, and there's no way Van was going to let Hitomi get away without at least spending one night. I also wanted to answer the question about why Hitomi pretended to be pregnant, and there was this delicious idea of how I could perhaps help these two to fall in love by the end of the day.

I wrote the original version to be as compact as possible. This version is more of a deep dive. The biggest changes begin at chapter 3. Chapter 5, which used to be the favorite chapter, is completely rewritten and twice as long as the original chapter 5.

I hope you like what I've done. Please comment! I would really love comments!

Hugs- CovertEyes

RATING DISCLAIMER

It's hard for me to know if I should rate this M or T due to the amount of sexual tension I've included. I mean, that's the point of the story, right? They're married. They should have a sexual relationship. Do I describe it? Nope. Would I have my teenage daughter read this? No. But do I think it's got mature content? Mmm maybe.

If I imagine my story as a movie, it would be rated PG13 for strong sensuality and brief nudity, so for that reason, I'm going with T. My goal in writing this is to make it romantic and steamy without being smutty or even citrusy. Just know going in that there is nudity, but I'm not going to describe it. I'll leave that up to your imagination. And everything that happens in between will be up to you, too.

If you disagree, please send me a PM. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

It goes without saying that I do not own Escaflowne stuff at all. I can't even take credit for the inspiration for this story.

Chapter 1: Rage and Revelations

This was more than Van could endure. He knew he shouldn't have left his wife.

As he was returning to the council chamber after leaving Hitomi in his bedroom, the warm imprint of her body in his arms still tingled from where he held her. And, rather than focusing on the new, vital information from his wife—Hitomi, he reminded himself to call her—his focus was fixated on the burning spot on his cheek where she'd kissed him for the first time since their marriage seven months ago. But underlying these strange sensations was a storm of the confusion and anger he had felt at her appearance before everyone just a few minutes ago.

All of these combined to leave him feeling strung-taut, jittery, and on edge.

And now his fellow rulers were barraging him with a seemingly unending stream of annoying comments and questions:

"Fanelia, you've got to be kidding, don't you think you should be with your wife?"

"You didn't want to help her feel better, King Fanel?"

"I agree with Dryden, you can take some time to be with Hitomi. She looked exhausted."

"Why don't you go take a nap with her, your Majesty?"

"I'll go sit with her!"

This last cheerful remark came from his young cousin-in-law, Chid, and on its own it might have been enough to ignite Van's possessiveness and returned him to his wife—the part of him that recognized that it should be him, her husband, who sat with her. Instead, it was a snort followed by a quiet quip on his right that caught his attention.

"She's about as good as bedding a wild hog."

This remark from Allen served as a battering ram to Van's delicate wall of self-control. All at once, those swirling, confounding thoughts he had been attempting to subdue combined and combusted into a flaming anger that consumed his entire being, and he fisted his hands and squared himself at the man in question.

Van had often been disgusted by the Knight Caeli, who, contrary to his assertion, was not in any way selective about the women he chose to bed. Indeed, Van had seen a string of wretched females leave his tent when they were on the battlefield. Such a debase implication about his wife, combined with the insults Allen had thrown at her before she fainted, stirred in the king a feeling of protectiveness that had been simmering beneath the surface for longer than he realized. After all, Van had been unable to protect her from Basram and Zaibach, but he could protect her from Allen.

Van ground his teeth together, glaring at Allen through narrowed eyes, his body shaking with the control it took to hold himself back. Allen's blue eyes glinted, and he chortled through an amused smirk.

That did it.

With a rush, Van bodily pinned the Knight Caeli up against the nearest wall, his arm at the other man's throat. "Care to insult my Queen again, Shaezar?" he growled.

Allen wheezed with the impact, his hands instinctively flying up to grasp at Van's arm, but the king planted his feet and leaned into the man's chest, his body taut. Allen's eyes bounced around the room, seeking out help, but when none came forward, he met his attacker's gaze with a flicker that Van's rushing mind made a wild guess at interpreting.

"You're jealous, is that it, Shaezar?" Van spat. Satisfyingly, Allen's eyes grew wide and his mouth gaped. "She rejected you, didn't she? She's my wife, Shaezar!" he snarled.

Van knew he'd hit close to the mark. Something about how Allen had treated Hitomi earlier tipped him off, and he realized he should have recognized the signs of jealousy sooner. It explained so much, including the subtle insults the knight tossed his way at every opportunity. But the king's victory was short lived. Allen's mouth twisted into a sneer, and this time it was Van's turn for public chastisement. "If I had to guess, I'm not the only one she's rejected," Allen sneered. "Can you even call her your wife, Fanel?"

Only his best kingly instinct preserved Van's pride and Allen's life right then as he focused everything he had to keep himself from dignifying the claim with a reaction, but behind his undeviating hold on the knight, Van's mind raced.

He and his wife had acted their parts well—hadn't they? Or had he himself given them away with his initially hostile treatment of her—before she pulled the pillow out of her dress—when she looked as if she were pregnant—as pregnant as she could have been had they consummated their marriage?

The king hoped the insult was just a wild guess on Allen's part, a stab in the dark intended to further agitate Van, but that didn't mean it was any less true. The truth was that while their initial abstinence had been mutually agreed upon—he understood so anyway—he had, for all intents and purposes, ignored her since their wedding day, appearing with her only when absolutely obligated, and occupying himself with business and other dealings the rest of the time.

Contrary to Allen's implication, Hitomi had never had the opportunity to reject him because Van had rejected her first by keeping her at arm's length.

Van pressed his lips together to keep up his angry facade. He swallowed, doing his best to focus on Allen as if he were fully present for this stare-off, but his mind kept racing, recalling how he felt during that single minute he had believed her to be pregnant with another man's child, how his heart had squeezed with a deep, thrumming ache he'd only felt a handful of times before. But then his mind reflected the pain back to himself: he had neglected Hitomi, and thus she'd been left to find love in the arms of another man. While her revelation that the pregnancy was fake was a huge relief, his self-realization compounded into a thought that was only just now forming: if he felt so deeply over an imagined lover of hers, how much pain might she have felt for his very real infidelity to her—even though his infidelity came in the form of neglect? The thought made him shrink, and he felt sick.

All of these thoughts came to Van in those seconds after Allen's affront, as if his mind had been busy processing what had happened with Hitomi earlier and had just now laid out the results before him. Shaking now, he blinked, trying to focus again on the knight he still had pinned against the wall, but it was no use.

"I'm done listening to your insults, Allen," he said, releasing the knight. The strength had gone out of his voice and body, and after the man shook himself away, Van pressed his now empty arm into the wall to keep himself from crumpling to the floor.

He heard Dryden dismiss Allen, but when the door shut behind the knight, the Council Chamber fell into a cavernous silence. Even the normally enthusiastic Chid remained mute. Van felt exposed, as if these people had witnessed his internal struggles along with his external dramas, and kept his eyes trained on his hand against the wall to avoid meeting anyone's eyes.

"Well, I think it's about time for lunch," Millerna said gently.

Figures slid out of the war room, but Van remained frozen. As Millerna left, she handed him the pillow Hitomi had pulled from her dress, murmuring something that he didn't listen to. Van took it numbly, still busy processing the revelations he'd just experienced. He felt as if his insides were rearranging into something new and different.

Shifting to look out a window, hoping to find clarity as he normally did, the vast expanse of city and gardens only pained his overwhelmed, battered senses. He squeezed his eyes shut, resting his forehead against the cool glass, cursing this weakness of feeling.

It was then his imagination conjured an image of Hitomi in his bed, naked, gazing up at him, one finger tracing his arm. It was such a potent image that his body shuddered and the arm in question burned. Regrettably, his mind turned to a more innocent image of her happily walking next to him, holding his elbow, her other hand resting on her swollen belly. Then another shift, and in her arms was a young toddler, her tiny hands reaching for him, and Hitomi's smiling green eyes locked with his over their child's head.

The sun came out from behind the clouds just then, blinding him even with his eyes closed, shocking him from his daydream. He sucked in a shaky breath and clenched his shirt, all too aware of his racing heart and a yearning ache filling his chest. The feeling was as visceral as it was unfamiliar, and the king didn't know what to make of it.

Van turned from the window and blinked as he focused again on the war room around him. When his eye caught the map that had been laid out for his wife not so long ago, he stepped to it. Troop and battery figurines had been placed in the key locations she'd pointed out, as if the other leaders had begun to plan their new counter-offensive during the time he'd taken to carry her to his room.

But as he looked at the map, he saw none of those. Instead, he found himself envisioning the potential routes his wife might have used on her trek here. It had been risky enough, her traveling all this way alone in a war. He hoped she hadn't endangered herself further by cutting through dragon country. Nevertheless, the worth of her undertaking for the sake of the country he loved and fought for—for their people—was not lost on him.

That curious warmth he had felt by the window grew as he pondered her sacrifice coming here.

A thought entered his mind. Any trusted messenger could have carried the information she brought—and possibly more quickly, too. She didn't come all this way just to bring them this news.

Could it be?

Hitomi was here—to see him?