Date. 03.19.2003
Time. 8.36 pm
Music. Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes"/the TV with "Angel" on.
Chapter 17

Copyright. I do not own any part of Escaflowne whatsoever. I am sad because of this.

Author's Notes. So did I piss off a lot of people last chapter or what? Only two faithful followers left reviews (kinda sad about this). Hopefully I can make it up to you guys. So I'm on my spring break right now. I spent last weekend/St. Pattie's day in Hilton Head where we had one nice day. Of course, Jigglykat had to go and not slather herself with sunblock so now I'm all burnt and in pain. At least it's only on my chest. Now I'm spending the rest of the week with my friend in Atlanta. I've been getting these waves of inspiration to write now that I don't have a lot of things to worry about i.e. SCHOOL. So this is me just typing out my thoughts.

By the way, check out the Tsubasa no Kami site at . I donated the screen caps for the Escaflowne Engrish section in the Gallery. I believed I mentioned this copy of the movie when I was writing "rota fortunae" about Barm and Florken.

The Vision of Escaflowne. Parvulus de Crepuscid

Chapter 17. A Perfect Memory

* * *

Hitomi…

It was his Hitomi. And yet, it wasn't her. Though those green eyes were unmistakable, there was something different about them. She was missing something.

That, plus seeing her holding a knife against their daughter's skin was definitely throwing him off.

"Hitomi…" Van whispered.

"Shut up!" she shouted, adjusting her grasp on Sellie and on the knife. "Drop your weapons!"

He examined her quickly, uncertain on what to believe anymore. She wore a white button-down shirt with the long sleeves rolled up, baggy beige shorts that hovered just above her knee, and leather boots that laced up halfway up her calf. It appeared that she had been wearing this strange outfit for awhile, for the white shirt stuck to her with sweat and dirt and mud caked the tread of the thick boots.

Her cold eyes darted back and forth from him to Celena, to Allen, back to him, and then to Gaddes, but his eyes remained solely on her. Her face was extremely pale, and dark circles darkened her sockets, indicating an obvious lack of sleep.

He must have stared a little longer than he really wanted to, for she tightened her grip on the knife and motioned to drive it into Sellie's flesh.

"Do it!" she screamed.

Van looked back at Allen and the others and silently twitched his index finger to the ground. They were as confused as he was, but obeyed Hitomi's command and Van's request, lowering their swords slowly and straightened out.

"Hitomi? What are you…" Van began.

"Shut up!" she shouted. "Just shut up!" She was apparently terrified herself, not sure on what to pay more attention to: her hostage or the others. Her eyesight continuously shifted between them, more so on Van. "Get your hands up where I can see them."

He raised his gloved hands to show he truly had no concealed weapons. "I don't understand…"

"Be quiet!" she cried. "I'm the one asking questions here." She hesitated, staring intently on Van. "How do you know my name? And why do you have swords?"

"Hitomi, it's me, Van," he said, placing one of his hands on his chest. "It's Van. Don't you know me?"

She continued glaring at him, no flicker of recognition in her eyes. "Should I?"

"We met about 20 years ago? We were fifteen and I was sent to the Mystic Moon and slew that dragon and you came back with me to Gaea in that pillar of light. You had all those visions and helped us win the Destiny War." He pleaded to the gods that somehow, his words were making any sense to her.

But Hitomi remained perplexed as ever. "Mystic Moon? Dragons? Gaea?" she inquired. "Have you gotten a CAT-scan recently? You're talking nonsense!"

"No, he's not, Hitomi," Allen said softly. "We are your friends. You really left your world and came to our world, Gaea."

"Shut up!" she replied. "Last time I checked, Earth is the only world around her that can support life. And I've never even heard of Gaea."

It's like her memories of all her time on Gaea and with us has been completely erased… Van thought. How could this have happened? What did Ashira do to her?

"Look, I know who you are," he said aloud. He tried to think desperately of all that she told him of her life on the Mystic Moon. "Your full name is Hitomi Kanzaki. You grew up in Kamakura, g Jah-pan. Your mother's name is Midori, your father's name is… hell, I don't know your father's name. Your brother's name is Mamoru. Your birthday is… well, on Gaea it would be Green, 9th Moon, but on your world, it would be Dee-cem-bur 9th. You ran for the track team, making the varsity team when you were a freshman, and cross-country while you were college. Your best friend, Yukari, married your other best friend, Amano, and they moved away to Uh-mer-ee-cah and had a baby." He stopped. "Hitomi, why don't you remember us?" he asked.

She didn't answer, so he pressed on. "Your memories of your life with me have been stolen. Don't you want them back?"

For a moment, her cold look relaxed as if she took his words to heart and considered lowering her defenses. But she blinked and tensed up once more.

"Of course I want my memories back!" she snapped, her voice cracking in her throat. "I don't know who to trust anymore… I've been stuck out here for almost a month now and I have no recollection of why I'm out here in the first place."

Van frowned. "You left Gaea only a couple days ago, Hitomi." But as he said this, he remembered that Gaea and the Mystic Moon weren't always in sync. Although it was only a few days ago that she disappeared from Cassia, Time could have passed much more rapidly here.

Her face scrunched up in frustration. "You know, I had enough troubles before you guys came here," she said matter-of-factly. "And you know me, but you never told me who you are."

"That's Celena," Van said slowly, pointing to the pale woman standing behind him. "That's Gaddes, and that's Allen…" he paused. "And that's Sellie you've got there... your daughter."

Hitomi blinked at him, but didn't reply quickly. "I don't have a daughter."

"Yes, you do, and you're holding a knife to her neck!"

She snorted in reply. "I think I would remember the pain of childbirth. I *don't* have a daughter."

"How do you even know that?!" Van rose his voice. "You can't remember anything of your life from the last 20 years. I'm telling you the truth, Hitomi. I always have told you the truth." He took a step closer to her, his hands still raised. She, still holding Sellie, hesitated to step backwards away from him. "You trusted me once," he said softly. "Look in your heart, Hitomi. What do your instincts tell you?"

He took another step towards her and she still did not back away. Her unfelt gaze at him slowly softened to a face that Van could recognize, a face that was permanently impressed into his mind.

"I don't know what to believe in," she whispered. "I've been told things while living out here… told my past… but I have no way of proving that the life that you described or the life she described is actually *my* life." She paused. "But I have to believe something."

Van stepped forward again. "Well then, first… please believe in this." He looked down at Sellie. "She *is* your daughter. Look into her eyes. She has *your* eyes."

Hitomi took a step backwards, pulling Sellie along with her. But she looked down at the small girl in his arms and stared deeply into her wide eyes. She lowered the knife from her neck and removed her hand from Sellie's mouth.

"I… I'm sorry," she murmured as she released her. The knife fell from her hand and landed on the soft earth below.

Sellie's hand went to her neck and rubbed it, relieved to see that the blade hadn't pierced the skin. She looked over at her father and nodded at him, telling him silently that she was alright. However, she returned her sight back to her captor.

Hitomi had shifted her view away, unable to look at her once-hostage. A tear brimmed on her lash. Once Sellie had been let loose, she lost her strong stature and her weak health emerged. As her arms wrapped themselves around her torso, Sellie approached her cautiously.

"Mom," she said gently. "It's alright. Everything Dad has said is true." She held out her hand for Hitomi's.

She looked at it in fear, then returning her gaze back to Van. "'Dad'?" she questioned.

"Yes," Sellie replied. "We are your family. It's going to be alright. Don't worry."

"'Don't worry?'" Hitomi repeated, still ignoring the younger girl's gesture. "I still don't know who to trust. Ashira tells me that my husband is dead, that he died protecting me, and yet, you tell me that *he*…" she pointed at Van, "…is really my husband? And all the while, Ashira has disappeared, there is no one else out here in this jungle, and that you could actually be my husband's murderers."

"I can assure you we aren't, Hitomi," Celena said. "You've been married to Van for thirteen years, you had Sellie, and we have been your friends since then."

"Thanks for clearing that up, hon," Hitomi said snidely. "But that really doesn't spark anything."

"Gods damn it, Hitomi!" Van snapped. "You're being almost as stubborn as I am!" He lunged forward and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Wake up! Bring back my Hitomi! You're lying to yourself right now! You're on the wrong side, love!"

"Don't touch me! Don't tell me what to believe!" Hitomi shouted back. "And don't call me 'love'! I don't know you!" Her fisted hands were already brimming with power as she pressed them both onto his chest. At the slightest contact, sparks of electricity generated from her fingertips as she placed her palms directly onto him and pushed. Within that split second of connection, Van flew through the air and landed firmly on Gaddes.

"So you've told me things I already know," she cried. "Big deal. That information could be made known to anyone."

Van held his chest and winced as he tried to get up off of Gaddes with Celena's help. Hitomi's anger had built up so much that she unintentionally sent hurtful energy right to his heart, but only enough to knock him off of his feet. If she intended to do that, he would be dead. He was lucky to be alive.

"Hitomi…" he groaned. "What is… the last thing you remember? I bet… I can pinpoint it exactly."

She didn't reply so he continued. "You went to a party… a masquerade for some holiday that you celebrate… Halloween, I think it was. You went with your college roommate, Naoko. She went as a demon… and you… you were an angel. You wore a long, brown wig with a silvery-white gown and white wings. You… you were there with a young man named Shinji, who you thought had good intentions, but he didn't. He drugged you so that he could take advantage of you. You ran out to the park… where nobody was… no one could save you."

Hitomi's hand covered her mouth in shock and disgust at that recollection. "I don't think I would ever tell anyone about that night…" she whispered.

"You didn't tell me the truth until a couple days ago," Van said, still breathing hard and coughing sporadically.

"There are other holes in my memory… long periods of time that I can't remember… but that's the clearest one. I figured that it was a dream or something," she said. "What happened?"

"You were rescued by your great-grandmother and brought back to Gaea," he answered. "Back to me." He held up his hand with his wedding band on it. "You and I… are soul mates," he said, coughing once more. "Meant to be together… always."

Hitomi looked down at her own hand where her two rings rested around her finger. She pulled off the one she recognized, her grandmother's engagement ring, as well as the foreign one she asked Ashira about. In doing so, she took a closer look at it. On the inside was an engraved passage in an unfamiliar language. As she stared at it disbelievingly, the characters converted to something she could read: "Meant to be."

As she read the simple words, flashes appeared before her eyes. She didn't remember these scenes, and yet, they were completely familiar to her:

She saw a terrible creature that she could only describe as a dragon chasing after her…

She saw a young man, pale-skinned and light-colored hair, with piercing red eyes with flames licking his body…

She saw the young man turn into a young woman, much softer features overtaking the harsh male angles and blue irises consuming the burning red…

She saw younger versions of the people that stood before her…

She saw an angel swoop down and grabbed her outstretched hand as she fell…

She saw a giant robot, gleaming in pearl-white metal with a proud blue cape flying in the wind behind it…

The rush of images to her Mind's Eye made her collapse to her knees. She breathed deep, trying to calm her racing heart, but it didn't help. She was afraid that this Van person was right in telling her about her missing life. She wouldn't let herself believe these strangers.

She glanced at the young girl standing in front of her, her small hands clasped together as if in prayer. Sellie lowered one of them to help her to her feet.

"Mom…" she whispered.

Hitomi looked up at her in fear. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I can't."

She could see the hopefulness in Sellie's eyes -- *her* eyes -- deteriorate as her gestured hand fell to her side in defeat. I'm sorry… I just can't… you have no idea how hard this is on me…

"Well done, Hitomi."

The three adults and young girl pivoted their heads around, as well as Hitomi, to see the source of the voice. Van groaned in pain and anger as he predicted whose voice it really was.

"Come on, Van," Ashira said as she stepped out from around the corner of the Temple. "Don't be so surprised to see me. I actually should be the one surprised to see you… alive." She scanned over the four people before her. "Ah yes. I see you've brought your ever faithful friends along. Let me guess… you've been trying to convince my Hitomi here that she actually belongs with you all?"

"What the hell are you talking about, she *does* belong with us," Van retorted as he stood to his feet. He still hurt, but he would have to deal with it if he wanted Hitomi back.

Ashira laughed. "Why would you fill her head with lies? She's already been through enough."

"Yeah, no thanks to you!" Celena spat.

"Ashira is my friend," Hitomi said.

Van turned around. "She is *not* your friend, Hitomi," he said to her. "It's because of her that you've lost your memories. She took you away from us on Gaea and brought you here."

"Hitomi lost her memories when she was hit on the head with falling debris while we were excavating on this archeological site," Ashira sighed. "Isn't that right, Hitomi?"

"Ummm…" she stalled. "I think so."

"Look! She doesn't even believe you!" Van pointed out.

"Oh please. Is she really going to believe you?" Ashira shot back. "You're the one that murdered her husband."

"You're the murderer, Ashira. We saw those corpses out in the jungle. That was your doing. Besides, she doesn't believe that," Van growled, but he looked back at his love anyway. "You don't believe that… do you, Hitomi?"

Hitomi had already risen to her feet and was slowly taking steps backwards, away from the argument. "I don't know."

Ashira snorted. "I don't have time for this. Tarn! Get over here."

Van's eyes widened as he saw the Cassian ruler walk around the Temple's corner, his sword already drawn and a malicious glare on his eyes. A nasty gash was bleeding from his forehead, though Van had no recollection of how he got it. He immediately moved to hide Sellie with his body.

Tarn grinned at Van. "Nice to see you're alive, Van," he said. "Now I'll have the joy of killing you with my own hands." He shifted his gaze to Ashira. "Whenever you are ready, My Lady."

Ashira had already closed her eyes tight in concentration as Tarn was speaking. The wind danced about them, at first lightly, but it soon picked up at great velocity. Van could hear both Celena and Sellie cry out, but he wasn't able to move to them. In fact, he could not move anything at all.

Suddenly, his feet were being elevated from the ground. As he glanced around, so was everyone else's. They all hovered in the air momentarily, but as Ashira lifted her arms, they moved upwards at an alarming rate. Van found himself wishing he could release his wings, but he knew it wouldn't do any good. Ashira was in control of them.

They now floated above the oculus to the Temple, the only entrance as Gaea had said. As they lowered into the darkness, Van looked at Sellie. The expression on her face spoke exactly what was on his mind:

How the hell were they going to get out of this?

to be continued…

* * *

Nice short little chapter. It was either this or one big long one, and I didn't feel like doing the latter. I haven't planned out exactly how many more chapters PDC is going to last, but I think it will be only three more, one of which will be the epilogue. Please be patient with me, I'm taking really important classes this quarter and I need to focus my attention on them. If the spirit moves me, then I will write.

Notes: In RF, Hitomi's brother was named 'Koji' because I was unaware he actually had a name. I was soon bombarded with messages saying his name was Mamoru so it was changed in PDC. I have not changed it in RF because I don't want to go looking for the file and such.