Same disclaimers as always.
Thanks bunches to those of you who've reviewed this, or anything else I've posted. It really makes my day to know someone enjoys what I do. ^_^ I lurve you all. *violent collective glomp* I'll try to update this every day until whenever I decide it's done. (You think I know where my stories are going better than you do? Hah!) However, I also have an original story I'm trying to make myself finish, and plenty of school-related stuff even though it's summer. Sigh.
I'm sorry that things are moving so slowly, but I've always been terrible at pacing. I hope that moving between the story and the past aren't confusing; I hate to write "he had done this, had done that" over and over.
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She never speaks to anyone. Her mouth stays closed, her eyes open, a smile sometimes crossing her pretty face to show her patronizing assent to anyone who dares presume he knows what is best for her. She likes to take walks with bare feet, feeling the grit and dirt she can never leave behind herself, letting her soul show through only on her soles, the root where men fear to glance or tread for fear and shame of what they know is there. The mud and dust that cling can be washed away, and she can be forced to wear shoes once she has been rediscovered and suppressed.
She always wears white, like an ethereal, sickly angel, a draconian, a being from a lost city long dead and still but recently disturbed for the sake of man's need to domineer the uncontrollable fate of himself and those whose destinies concern him, for better or for worse.
She was the swept-up cobwebs and the brushed-away dust, all tidy hair, all clean face, all neat and nice with that essential element of passed time lacking, creating the overall visage of something lost and found, created and destroyed, beautiful to look at but not complete in person or presence.
And she spoke to Van Fanel.
Her eyes were blue, large and sad, though they had not always been that way. It seemed that fate, subverted or unmolested, had that much in store for her. Dilandau's eyes were lost forever, and these blue orbs she'd begun with were once more restored, her destiny re-directed to the life of a lonely little girl, all alone inside herself.
"She remembers me," Van told Allen.
The knight found that troubling, and inquired, "Are you certain?" His sister was no longer the monster Dilandau Albatou had been, and she would be the sweet girl he remembered now. All outward indication corroborated it.
"Yes, she told me so."
"Well, if Selena spoke to you at all, that must be a good sign. She hardly ever talks to anyone." Allen frowned as he spoke, uncertain of the good or ill indications of this development. "She only speaks if she wants, no, needs something, usually. She does get into the mood to converse occasionally, but never with strangers."
"We're not strangers."
Allen considered it, turning the issue over in his mind. It seemed out of character, but who was he to dictate what her character was? She seemed to confuse herself more than she did anyone else, and no one was more perplexed than the brother who yearned to be her family. He loved her more than the world, more than the stars, more than any woman he'd ever desired, unconditionally, and he hardly knew who she really was. He didn't care.
"I'm glad she's opening up to someone," Allen finally sighed. "I was worried about keeping her here. But she needed to get away from Pallas. It smothered her. She begged me to take her somewhere far away, and with Selena, begging means absolute desperation. I couldn't keep her like that."
"I believe you." Van shook his head, sighing. "Another two bodies helping us rebuild is certainly appreciated. It's been months and we're still hardly off the ground."
Van said that, but it was obvious that he enjoyed Allen's presence for its own sake. The bonds forged by alliance in the war had only strengthened with time. Tension existed in their conflicting motives and ideologies, their incompatible loyalties and values, and their mutual, enduring love for the same woman, yes, but they were closely-bound rivals in those affairs, not mortal enemies as Dilandau and Van had been for many of the same reasons.
"I'd rather do honest work to help those who need it than waste away in Castelo Fort. Millerna's heart is in the right place, but she doesn't understand why I've decided to come straight here rather than guard the border from invisible phantoms." Gaddes, in addition, had been equally disappointed by Allen's decision to leave military life. Allen had languished years too many tied up by an Aston's bureaucracy before, and his sister's return gave him the supplemented strength to break free of the cycle chivalry in its traditional form had brought to him. He was following no man's conscience but his own.
"And Selena?"
Allen shrugged, tossing his bound hair over one shoulder, banishing the sweat from his brow with an already moist handkerchief. Even after a day of labor beneath the sneer of the sun, his appearance was more regal than Van's own. Dirt and sweat seemed to form the outer layer of his being, and still he managed to appear the most thoroughly civilized and stately man in the world, hair inexplicably neat and Asturian fashion smart. The heat of the Fanelian day did not allow him his usual full regalia, but he had never gone a day without his uniform in Castelo and he refused to sacrifice appearance for comfort now. The knight was a deeply principled man.
"Selena seemed excited enough about the idea. She's a kind girl. You might want to prepare yourself in case she brings home a sick dragon to nurse back to health."
Upon their return home, she superficially resumed childhood from where it had left off. Allen treated her to childish pleasures; gaimelef tournaments, dances, candy, jewelry, and toys. It began innocently enough. He found her staring, intently, eagerly at a beautiful china doll with long, straight blonde hair in a storefront one day. Her lack of speech and response to nearly everything led Allen to assume, with good cause, that she required the supervision that a five-year-old might, and he asked if she would like to have it.
She smiled, nodding a little, and he gave her the doll as a present to welcome her home. From that day onward, he could not resist the urge to lavish upon her anything she gave the slightest indication of desire for. His days brightened, as he saw things the way he imagined they must appear to her eyes; the vividness of color suddenly occurred to him, the slight but prickly feeling of the wind upon his face became a gale. He was supersensitive to everything around him that he'd never noticed before, because of her. Things he thought she'd like because they appeared so wonderful to him in his lucid delirium, he could not help but purchase as a gift.
On arriving home, she took the doll and disappeared into her room with it for several hours. He knocked on the door, softly, to rouse her from her retreat and eat supper, and when the door opened, she presented him with the doll, adorned in makeshift trousers cut from the cloth of her bedding and an unbecoming haircut. It made him grimace to see how she had ruined her expensive new toy so soon, but she seemed so thoroughly pleased with herself that he complimented her on the doll's new attire and informed her that she need only ask for a bit of fabric the next time she felt inclined to stich any loose edges together. She nodded, contemplatively.
Everything else that he bought her seemed to endure similar treatment. Her dolls all transformed from girl to boy in the space of a few hours after Selena brought them home, though she did so well at altering them that they looked every bit as beautiful as they had prior. After fifteen of the things, she decided that she needed no more dolls and gave a rare word instructing Allen to stop wasting his money on her.
He never could understand her desire to tinker with all the things that seemed the height of perfection when he first beheld them, but he could not hope to prevail against the passing of her fancy. He continued to search for things she would enjoy, and on the occasions when she accepted his gifts as they were, he rejoiced inwardly. She began to respond favorably in direct proportion to the acceleration of his frenzy, and he assumed that meant his understanding of her had been improving. She bore his eccentricities with patience.
She altered the dresses he bought her, taking up embroidery and doing very well at it for a beginner. Selena's interest in a decidedly feminine craft reassured Allen that her brief obsession with boyhood was no more than a passing phase, perhaps the last dying quivers of Dilandau's mark upon her soul.
One day, as she sewed, content to stay at the house while her brother went to the bazaar, she discovered amidst the flowers the body of an injured crow. By the time that Allen returned, she had fashioned for its wing a splint and made herself thoroughly muddy in pursuit of earth-dwelling flesh as means to sustain her wounded charge. As little as he approved, Allen could not possibly deny her the joy her pet brought her, and the crow stayed.
She adopted more fauna, bringing into the house any animal that needed care or struck her fancy. Before they left for Fanelia, she set them all free. In a whirl of feathers, in a flash of fur, in a gleam of teeth they were before her one moment, unsure of the direction their lives were taking, and then, at her insistence, they were gone. "They'd never survive away from their native home," she noted with a sigh. "I wonder why animals can't leave simple things behind, while people can."
"They can't, always," was all Allen could say in reply. "I could never move past the idea of you. Your disappearance still haunts me, and I have you back."
She'd smiled tightly, and shook her head. "I know."
That conversation was the longest, most insightful, and most jarring thread of communication the two of them might ever have. Certainly, Allen spoke to her, but she responded only in nods and smiles, pretending the role of a happy little girl that he was not always entirely sure she really was. He'd inquired, once, of her feelings toward him; was she full of hate, love, or ambivalent? She answered, "That's a silly question," with a smile.
Allen and Van, together, slipped through the crowds in silence, stealing from the chatter and the people surrounding. The all-encompassing chatter, the low level of noise right behind their ears, buzzing just behind the lobe with the tenacity of a lurking mosquito possessing maternal aspirations, did not fade when the masses did. The sound of laughter and of cheerful voices was a curious and unreverent backdrop to the quiet solitude of the yard behind the palace. The stillness of air and emptiness of man that place encompassed, when coupled with the whispers and voices of the people of Fanelia, made it seem that here were ghosts, here were monsters, here was the soul that collectively resided in the hearts of man.
You saw things there, Allen thought, casting his eyes around. You saw the faintest rustle of a leaf and it seemed to move in accordance to the invisible bodies of the dead. You saw the demon queen of this country wandering the wood where it began, where Van recollected his mother had walked when she left and she never returned. You saw the dragons sacrificed for the coronations of kings in the trees, yellow eyes peering out.
He saw her, next, hardly more substantial than the ghosts in his imagined vision projected. She was there. Her dress was black today, despite the heat, embroidered with flowers in red. The vines were like something alive, like licks of flame around the hem and snaking up her stomach to engulf her breasts in a full array of blossom. He glanced away, to where she was gazing.
She sat, dry-eyed, distant as when she had been with him in a cemetery that first time, upon the grave of the Strategos of Zaibach, the Crown Prince of Fanelia. Her eyes surveyed the letters, put them in order. She whispered, unlamenting, hardly mournful, "Folken Fanel."
Allen's initial reaction was anger that she was out alone, but he wrestled it into submission as he carefully controlled all aspects of his life. He'd mentioned to her, idly, in passing, that the body of Van's brother had been found, and that a funeral in full traditional fashion would be held in his honor. Surely, she must simply have been curious about this man after hearing Allen's description of his martyrdom. He walked up behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Why black?"
She did not look at him, boring at the headstone with her unrelenting, emotionless gaze. "You buy me so many dresses, but I hardly wear any them. I thought I should get some use out of the rest."
Van glanced at the grave with little more than disgusted pity. "Whenever I come out here, I wish that we were closer. I was little when he left, and I didn't want to get to know him when I learned he was still alive."
"He proved himself to be a good man, in the end," Allen offered, and he believed what he said. "It must have been difficult to help destroy something you believed in so passionately." He tenderly stroked his sister's shoulder, and informed in an unintentionally condescending tone, "Selena, we'll be having supper soon."
She nodded blankly. "You should change." A little smile tugged at the corner of her mouth; few ever saw Allen Schezar in a state of uncleanliness.
"You're right. I will. Stay close by Van." He kissed her cheek before he left.
She turned to look at the king, expression worn but not surprised. Van writhed awkwardly under her gaze, slicing straight through him in a manner all too familiar. "He's very protective," he observed, even someone as comfortable with silence as him unable to bear the quiet borne of unassuming tension. "Does he ever let you do anything?"
"Yes." She turned, with all the viscosity of stone, to stare back into his brother's engraved name. "But only with his approval and supervision. He doesn't want to lose me again. How did Folken die?"
Her lack of pretense and the abrupt change of subject threw him, hard. "You don't know?"
Selena's eyes narrowed, and she reached with soft fingers to touch the cold, unyielding proof of Folken's death. Tracing the name with feather-light contact, she minced, "I've heard lots of things. I don't know if they're true. You tell me what you know." Dilandau was shining through her now with stunning brilliance: her tone lowered, offering nothing to him unless he gave her something, no room within the limited range of pitch for negotiation. Absolutely militaristic. She claimed that part of her was dead, but even she must notice the easy way she slipped into that persona and how well it fit upon her.
"He died assassinating Dornkirk. Hitomi said his sword went right through the old man, broke, and flew back at him." He illustrated the scene elaborately with his hands, fully aware of how gruesome and impersonal he made it. Even after Folken's death, he couldn't bring himself to feel any kind of sympathy for his brother. He simply could not comprehend the man's motives.
"The Emperor should never have trusted a man who would betray his own country. He was bound to do it again. Any day. He never showed any emotion at all. All that pressure, kept inside. He was sure to snap." She released a volley of laughter that was not at all happy.
"That's not why he did it."
"I'm sure it wasn't. He let individuals get in the way of the majority. No war is deathless, and no society is without problems somewhere. He told me he was in with Zaibach to end the world's pain. I can't stand idealists."
"Allen is one."
She grimaced. "I know it. But I love him, even so. And, besides..." She hesitated, the heaviness of Dilandau's legacy lightening a bit, her eyes growing softer. She bit her lower lip, the pink flesh bending without resistance to the pressure of her smooth, white teeth. "He needs me."
She sighed, smoothing her skirts, standing upright, rigid as a soldier in a long line knowingly sent off in a final march to death, a proud and beautiful thing unafraid of the slaughter. She repeated it again, affirming it to herself, explaining yet again why, despite Allen's flaws, she cared.
"He needs me."