Yeah, I…wrote something. This wasn't where I was planning on going with the story back in September, I'll tell you that. But now it's going, and who am I to impede the direction my story takes on? I'm trying to get back into the style of the rest of this piece, but I think it takes about half the chapter to accomplish that…I've been writing so much original stuff lately, all of which is narrated in various styles due to the personalities of the first-person narrators, that I haven't written anything like this in months.

Enjoy.

Comment.

I don't own Escaflowne.

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It must have rained the day that Folken Lacour de Fanel died, somewhere on the surface of the cold ground on Gaea. There were storm clouds brewing when the Dragon Slayers were destroyed, Selena remembered clearly, and so something in Heaven above must have broken and poured down and out like a river of her grief when Folken's body finally managed to tread where his spirit had fled long before. There was no other explanation, for where else could that sorrow have gone, leaving this hole in her heart, empty, where even despair would be a welcome relief from the monotony of not-feeling and the tedium of not-hurting?

She was different now than she had been before. When Selena was Dilandau and Dilandau was Selena, every little prick she felt as a slash across and through the heart, and every shock was a bolt through her body, animating her like something monstrous and not really alive so that she could accomplish anything. That was why she had loved her gaimelef, the Alseides, more than any human being could ever hope to be loved by anyone, anywhere. When Dilandau, when he was Selena, had been within the confines of that metal beast, able to manipulate the substance and shape of anything she liked according to the fickle dictates of her whim, then, she felt truly alive for the only time she could ever remember. She felt like she was part of something, important, strong, and more than the sum of her mismatched parts.

Now, things were different, and so was she, so she was no longer Dilandau the way that anyone meant by it. There was nothing to be accomplished in this broken, fragile body, because nothing made her feel anymore and she had no motivation to do anything. As soon as the desire to shake and rend the world manifested,  it dimmed and faded away into nothing at all, now. Not-feeling was more tiring than the way she had been before.

Van tired her, too; she was not vengeful and did not purposely intend to either lead him on or, alternately, cause him heartbreak, but it was more than she could motivate herself to do to make him feel good about their relationship to one another. She hadn't the energy to be passionate about anything, and that included Van and the shady memory of his brother, hazy in the forefront of her mind, indefinite but growing more solid, almost tangible, at night.

She kissed Van the way that she wished she and Folken had kissed: passionately, without physical or emotional restraint, amplifying to stark, blinding contrast their vastly irreconcilable natures rather than eliminating them. Selena did not cry in the graveyard, over his stone, but only because she was no longer certain that she possessed the will to generate tears or the ability to feel the sting of salt on her eyes like they were open wounds. Folken, for all of their attachment to one another, brittle and pliant in one instant, simultaneously and continuously, would never have said to Dilandau the words that Van insisted on whispering to Selena, whenever they were alone, accompanied by a feverish kiss.

The girl remained convinced that Van only said the words that seemed most suitable to the situation, and that he did not know what love was. Real love, she knew, was so inexpressible that those words could not encompass it, and because of that, it was useless to try and using them, that little phrase of three distinct segments, was proof in and of itself that the love was not real. She knew about love.

Though it was impossible to say when and how it began, she did know that the desperate longing for Folken that she felt, not even necessarily sexual or romantic in scope, had been that. She relished any contact with him at all, especially their arguments, when she had been able to allow the extent of her fire to show in dazzling display, and he had been able to be his most cold. It was strange that the man made of ice would yield to the boy composed of fire without so much as batting an eye or melting, certainly not expanding or contracting in any capacity of length or breadth, when the lightest breeze might completely eradicate Dilandau or, depending, fan him into a raging inferno.

The frantic kisses exchanged between Selena and Van were not that kind of love. They were too much alike and not complementary enough for that, in her opinion. And yet, with that first kiss she'd given him, by Folken's grave, she found herself unable to stop.

Selena was tormenting the king, she knew, coming to him at night and keeping him from the rest that he desperately required, accepting his caresses and succumbing to the inarticulate murmurs that he raised, one by one, along the ridges of her spine, and in the morning leaving without a word of thanks or encouragement. When he tried to speak to her during the daytime, she spurned, ignored, or simply disregarded him. And later, all conversation was forfeit to that uncontrollable desire to kiss him and hold him close and never let him go.

Until the sun rose, when she did.