Chapter 4

Flashback
Hitomi once again felt the wild sensation of flying with Van. One of her hands was touching the base of his wings and it was the most incredibly soft thing she had ever touched. Yet it was strong to, she could feel the strength of his wings as they beat on his back and kept them in the air. It was the most mystifying thing she had ever done and she wanted to be able to do it the rest of her life.
"Are you okay?" Van whispered into her ears as if the whole world depended on her being okay. But then again maybe it did, at least maybe it did for Van.
"Yes, I'm fine." Hitomi stared into his chestnut brown eyes and he stared right back and for what seemed like an eternity, they lost themselves in each other. Staring, just staring at each other and absorbing everything that had happened that night and everything that they had been through together. "Van, thank you." Hitomi broke the trance but they kept staring at one another
"For what."
"For saving me, for showing me that maybe I am needed, that maybe my death would mean something to someone and that not everyone in existence would go on with their lives normally if I did die."
Van was close to the ground now so he waited until he had landed to answer Hitomi. "Hitomi, you have saved, not only me but my entire world. I should be thanking you." At this Van tightened his arms around Hitomi and leaned down until his face was millimeters away from her face, (AN: I'm Canadian, we're metric up here) "You also did something that I thought no one would ever be capable of doing."
Vans whispering breath tickled Hitomi's face and made their position all the more alluring to her. "What was that?" She whispered back hoping to have the same affect on him.
"You opened up my heart and helped me feel again." Van closed the distance between his lips and hers and gave Hitomi her first kiss, and it was the deepest most passionate kiss anyone could have imagined their first kiss to be.
End Flashback

"Hi" Of all the stupid things that she could have said Hitomi had to say 'Hi'. It was definitely the lamest thing Hitomi had ever said in her entire life. "Uh I mean...um...I don't now what to say." There was no possible way this conversation could get worse.
"Me neither." His voice was quiet and deep, deeper then she remembered it being. " So, H-how did you get back?" Not knowing what to say to the girl he had thought about every waking moment for the past six months Van simply decided to question her on the mystery of her return. Unfortunately, Hitomi didn't know much more then Van did about her return to Gaea.
"Well, I uh had a dream about that girl that was with Falcon-san and she told me to return. So, the next day I went to the stadium where I'd first seen Falcon and I uh came back." Hitomi stumbled along the explanation as she realized it didn't explain much.
A lot of questions popped into Van's mind at hearing this and he didn't quite know why, maybe he was nervous, but the most unimportant question came out fist, "What's a stadium?" After saying this with difficulty, as it was a foreign word, Van felt the unfamiliar feeling of humility and didn't quite know what to do with it.
"Oh, a stadium is like a big field used to play sports surrounded by walls and sometimes a roof, sort of, I'm not explaining very well." It was official Hitomi was going to shrivel up and die of embarrassment the only thing stopping her right now was that Van seemed to be equally embarrassed.
Deciding to save the small talk for later Van came up with an idea, "Do you feel like you can get up and handle a bit of a party."
Hitomi thought this sounded like a fine way out of an awkward situation. "Sure, what's this party all about?"
"The people of Adon decided to have a bonfire to celebrate the six month anniversary of the end of the war against the Black Dragon Clan.
"Sounds like fun"
*****
"Boss, come on we gotta go!" Gaddes yelled at the retreating back of Allen.
"I've got to get Millerna." Allen yelled back over his shoulder as he ran back to the castle to find Millerna. He looked out over the ruins of the once great country of Freid and hoped to god that Millerna wasn't in the part of the palace that had collapsed.
"Allen!" Allen stopped surprisingly quickly for someone who had been running as fast as the wind blows. He looked over to his left and saw Millerna running towards him with five enemy soldiers right behind her.
Allen pulled out his sword and ran towards Millerna. "Millerna, five behind you!" Hearing this Millerna pulled out her knife and waited until Allen was closer then turned around and dashed up to the nearest soldier and put her knife into his neck then pulled it out so quickly that the man was down before he had registered that she had turned around. Next to her Allen had come up to two soldiers and in the blink of an eye slashed both their arms off and stabbed a third who had tried to sneak up behind him. Millerna kicked the fifth soldier down to the ground where Allen quickly and smoothly chopped off his head. "Come on, the Abaharaki are waiting for us."
"But we can't just abandon Freid, this is my home." Millerna protested and for a second nearly convinced Allen.
"We can't do anything now. We were unprepared the smartest thing to do now is to retreat, now come on a lot more soldiers are going to be here soon."
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Out of now where Millerna screamed as if she had seen a ghost. Allen turned around to see what she was looking at and nearly screamed himself. The soldiers that had not had the head chopped off had gotten back up still bleed profusely from their mortal wounds.
"Millerna, run." At this they both ran as fast as they knew how back to the Abaharaki landship.
*****
Merle saw them stand up and head towards the door and she decided to get into leaping position. "HITOMI!"
Hitomi didn't know what had hit her. One moment she was calmly walking out of the hut with Van and the next moment something had slammed into her and knocked her down to the ground. Hitomi looked down and come into contact with one of the weirdest faces she had ever seen. If they were not already good friends Hitomi would have been scared out of her wits that this was a living, breathing creature.
"Merle, hi." This was just a bad talking day for Hitomi but she supposed it could be worse considering what had happened today. "
'Hi', that's all you have to say. What are you doing here!" Merle shouted so loud right into Hitomi's ear, Hitomi was very sure she'd be deaf before the night was over.
A couple hours later Hitomi was sitting around an extremely large campfire with Van sitting next to her, both of them watching Merle and other village children dance to the folk music being played by some rather talented musicians. Although Hitomi was enjoying the comfortable silence between her and Van she was most definitely going to go crazy if someone didn't say something soon.
"Hey Van."
"Hitomi I-" Obviously Van was thinking along the same lines. "Sorry, you go first"
"I was just wondering what the lyrics in the song meant." Hitomi felt kind of stupid being the only one around who didn't understand what was being said in the songs.
"I uh I don't know." Van seemed kind of embarrassed when he said this but it made Hitomi feel a lot better about not understanding the words.
"Oh good I'm not the only one." Van laughed a bit at this which helped to release the tension between the two of them. Van suddenly saw that Merle was trying to catch his eye, as he looked up at her he saw that she was gesturing towards the dance floor, Van shook his head at her and of course Hitomi noticed. "What are you shaking your head at?" Hitomi asked
"Nothing. Um do you um maybe want to um uh you know uh dance maybe?" Hitomi thought Van was rather cute when he stammered. When she realized this it made her sad because she had obviously missed a lot of his life in the past six months and there was no possible way she could ever get those six months with him back. "What's wrong?" Van noticed that a very sad look had crossed Hitomi's face and he suddenly wanted more then anything else in the world, to see her smile again.
"I just realized that we've been apart for so long and there's no way that we will ever get that time back and we've missed so much of each others life that-"
"Hey, that doesn't matter. What matters is the time that we do spend together, what's important is that we are together now." Hitomi looked up at Van as he said this and suddenly remembered, as clear as day, her first kiss and the intense emotion that had run through her just before it had happened, it was the same feeling she had right now.
Van leaned his head down towards Hitomi until he was so close he could feel her breath entering his slightly open mouth, he paused for a second then continued to his descent towards Hitomi's ever so tempting lips. "VAN!" Before Van ever had a chance to kiss her they heard a very familiar voice call out to them from behind. Hitomi and van turned around to see Allen being held captive by some Adon soldiers. "Could you tell you're guys here to back off."