Title: When I Talk To You
Author: Lady of the Ink
Pairing: V/H
Category: Action/Adventure/Romance, with some good angst thrown in for flavor.
Disclaimer: I don't own Escaflowne, but you knew that. I hope. But I do own this story and all the plot twists it contains. I also don't own the Wizard of Oz, or the Munchkins.
Dedication: To all the reviewers who have taken the time to read this, and tell me what they thought.

Chapter Six
All These Changes

One. Two. Closing her eyes, the girl took a deep breath, and then counted again. One, two. That was one too many, as far as she was concerned. Barely managing to keep from banging her head into the tree, the girl tried to calm down.

Look at the bright side of things, she told herself. You are alive. You're not hurt worse than a few bumps and bruises, and a couple of scratches from your new best friend, the tree. The ground is beneath you, the grass is green . . . and there are two planetary masses hanging in the sky.

She whimpered to herself. Digging her fingers into the dirt, she swallowed the urge to scream like a banshee. Sure, it might make her feel better, but it would also let anything big and scary with lots of teeth know exactly where she was.

Okay, get a grip, she silently ordered herself. You can deal with this. It's not like you have no clues as to where you are. Those things in the sky are the earth and moon. Sure, you shouldn't be able to see the earth; you should be on it, but at least you know you're close.

"Maybe this is Mars," she muttered, thinking over all the headlines she'd seen about scientists finding proof of life there. Of course, they hadn't meant life like on Earth, but really, who knew? This could be some Martian settlement no one else knew about.

Just as visions of little green men heading toward her singing like the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz began jumping through her mind, the very real sound of footsteps began to approach from behind.

Van urged the horse to run as fast as he dared. It was now obvious that the boy behind him wasn't much of a rider, and going faster might send their passenger back onto the path. Van tried to keep calm, but knew he was fighting a losing battle.

After all this time, Hitomi could be back on Gaea, and he didn't know where to find her. Night had fallen like a heavy velvet curtain, blanketing the world in darkness that suddenly seemed ominous. Just knowing that she was out there alone made his chest feel tight. He hated feeling helpless!

Add to that the uncertainty of what Corey had meant earlier when he said Hitomi was in no condition to care for herself, and you had one unhappy king. Nothing was going to keep him from getting back to town and then setting off to search.

Except maybe Merle.

As soon as he arrived at the town house, he saw the young cat girl pacing through the window. She was out the door before his feet hit the ground.

"Lord Van, I've been looking for you everywhere! You won't believe what I . . ." Her voice trailed off as she watched a shaky Corey slide gracelessly to the ground. He wobbled for a moment before regaining his balance. Her vision being what it was, it took only a moment for Merle to see the similarities between this boy and another visitor they'd once had.

"That's why there were two," she murmured to herself, thinking back to the lights she'd seen a few hours before. Looking up, she smiled at the two obviously surprised boys. "So, where's Hitomi?"

Watching as Van's face clouded with apprehension and uncertainty, Merle felt a sinking feeling inside her stomach. This could only mean a few things, and none of them were good.

Seeing a head pop out one of the neighboring windows, Merle urged both boys inside. They needed to talk without worrying about being overheard. As the three filed their way into the study, the silence was like a thick, oily cloud. Merle forced herself to take a deep breath and try to control the situation.

"I was looking for you," she began, nodding towards Van, "when I found this." She held up the pendant, jumping lightly back when Van lunged to snatch it from her hand. Waiting a moment while he looked over the broken the chain, she offered a hesitant smile to their visitor. "I don't even know your name."

"Corey; its Corey. And you're Merle. Hitomi told me a lot about you."

"Only the good stuff is true," she replied with a cheeky grin. She was glad to see a small answering smile cross his face. He'd been looking entirely too apprehensive for her tastes. Noting that Van had finished his inspection, Merle continued her earlier train of thought. "What exactly is going on? Where's Hitomi? Why are you here?"

Van was still staring at the pendant clutched in his hand. A flicker of concentration crossed his face, and Merle guessed he was trying to find his connection with Hitomi. Judging from his disheartened sigh, it wasn't going so well. Looking at Corey, she signaled he should start.

The boy sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "It's kind of a long story. When Hitomi came back, from here, I mean, she came back to before she'd left. No one remembered her being gone, but she acted differently. She seemed a lot more serious than she'd been before. It took awhile, but I finally got her to tell me what had happened. I guess she knew I would believe her, since our Grandma talked about Gaea when we were younger.

"I knew that she thought that all this," he waved a hand around the room, "was real, but there was still a part of me that said maybe she'd imagined it all. That she thought it was real, but it actually wasn't. But the more she talked about all of you, the more details she brought up, the more real you all became, until it was like I knew you, too."

He offered a small smile, almost an apology for presuming a relationship with them. "It was really nice, sharing this huge secret with Hitomi. We weren't the closest siblings ever, but it made me feel good that she knew she could share something like this with me. That she felt safe enough.

"Everything would have been great, except our mom overheard us one day. I don't know if Hitomi told you, but Gaea was the reason she and Grandma stopped talking. Mom refused to believe this place existed, and hated it when Grandma brought it up. They actually stopped talking for years because of it.

"I always thought it seemed a little harsh for that kind of rift to grow out of one, we thought, pretend place. But then, I was only five or so at the time, so there may have been something I missed. The day Grandma gave Hitomi her pendant was the last time we saw her.

"So my mother was really not happy to hear us talking about it. It was always some unspoken rule that we weren't supposed to bring it up. She got remarkably angry, and wound up sending us to a shrink. That's like someone who listens to your problems and helps you work through them. But it's also who they send crazy people to. People who see things that aren't there, or believe in other worlds."

He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. "I just nodded my way through, basically letting them think that it was just a game to me. But Hitomi got really mad. I could hear every word of what she was yelling two rooms away. There was a lot of 'How would you know it's not real?', and 'I'm not crazy, I know what I saw.' I guess months of keeping it to herself had just built up, and then the dreams started, and the link between the two of you broke . . . It was too much."

Van leaned forward, and would have spoken, but Corey's raised hand stopped him. If he was going to make it through the retelling, he couldn't stop now. "She got deeply depressed, until it got so bad, she wouldn't even get up in the morning. She just lay there, staring at nothing.

"They sent her away. Her own parents. To this place where people go when no one thinks they'll ever get better. They wouldn't visit her, not even on her birthday. It was like she no longer existed to them. But I went, everyday after school. I'd talk to her, try to let her know she wasn't alone. That I'd be there when she decided to get better."

He swiped halfheartedly at the tears slipping down his cheeks, feeling that helplessness come over him again. "Then I had the dream she'd been having. It was about you guys, in trouble. I knew that to help Hitomi, I'd have to help you. So I got a friend to help me sneak Hitomi out the Institute. I didn't know what I was going to do next, but, as it turns out, I didn't really have to.

"Like three minutes after we got out, there was just this strange, floating sensation and I passed out. When I woke up, you were there, and Hitomi wasn't." He directed his last comment to Van, and then leaned back in his chair.

Merle noted the tense look on both boys' faces, and took control. "There's nothing any of us can do tonight. The two of you are going to get some rest, and we'll start looking at first light." She glared at the obviously unhappy Van. "Not. One. Word. There's not much night left, if you haven't noticed, so it'd not like I'm making you wait a week. You'll be no good to Hitomi if you collapse of exhaustion."

She ushered the two boys to their rooms, trying to keep her own spirits up. She wouldn't allow herself to think about Hitomi being anywhere but on Gaea. They would find her, she would get better, and everyone would be happy again.

It just had to be that way.

Next Chapter: I'm Still The Same