"Hey dad," Hitomi said as she walked in the door.
Her dad looked up. "Hey Hitomi. Where were you?"
"Oh, nowhere. I just lost track of time at Van's."
"He's a good kid, has he been treatin' you well?"
Hitomi blushed. She mumbled an assent, wondering how the whole world knew about her relationship with Van. She tripped her way down the stairs to her basement. Every time she went down stairs now, she would have to check to make sure there was no one behind her. She refused to walk or stand in front of anyone on the way down.
Mamoru was in the basement, sitting outside her room, playing with a friend. "Hi 'Tomi! Some people are in your room!"
"What?" she asked.
"Merle and Millerna are in your room. They got here a while ago."
"Alright," Hitomi said, trying to prepare herself for bad news if that's what they had come for.
When she opened the door, Merle was crying onto Millerna's shoulder. Hitomi took that as a bad sign and immediately stepped forward and put a hand on Merle's shoulder. She jumped off Hitomi's bed and hugged her, still crying. Clutching her friend, Hitomi tried to read Millerna's face with little success.
"Hitomi! The test - the test - Oh, God!"
"Calm down Merle."
"It was - it was - negative. Oh, God. I'm not pregnant! I'M NOT PREGNANT!"
Hitomi let out a scream and jumped up and down. Millerna was smiling and her eyes were shining with tears. For a moment they all stared at each other until a tear rolled down Millerna's face. Then they started laughing.
"Are you - are you going to tell him?" Hitomi asked.
A shocked look appeared on Merle's face. "What?! No! Why would I do that?"
"You don't think he deserves to know what you did, Merle?" Millerna prodded gently.
"No!" Merle cried. "I don't even know if we did anything!"
"But..."
"No 'Lerna, I'm not gonna tell him."
"Okay, simmer your pants girl, it was just a suggestion."
The phone rang. Hitomi's father yelled for her to pick up. Obliging, she found herself talking to Dilandau.
"Yeah Dilly. 'Lerna and Merle are here.... Okay, you'll be here in five minutes? ... Sounds good dude, see ya soon." Hitomi hung up and faced her girlfriends. "The guys are on their way. Dilly said something about a movie at Van's. You guys both up to that?"
Nods and noises of assent came from her friends as Millerna stood up and started to reapply her smudged makeup. Merle sat for a moment, saying nothing but smiling.
"Hey, they're taking the grade twelve picture next week," Millerna commented casually
"Yeah. I can't wait, it'll be great!"
"You guys," came Merle's dreamy voice, "I think I'm gonna tell him."
Hitomi grinned, green eyes glinting. Millerna applied some more eyeliner just as Mamoru ran into the room yelling, "VAN'S HERE!" and causing her to poke herself in the eye. She cried out and put a hand over it. Laughing, the three of them headed upstairs. Looking out the window, Hitomi could see the dark haired beauty that was her boyfriend standing outside of Allen's car waiting for them.
With a yell to Mr. Kanzaki, they left and Van smiled at Hitomi when she caught his eye. He grabbed Merle around her waist and tossed her into Allen's Shaggin' Wagon. She shrieked as she landed on Dilandau.
"Hey Dilly, I feel very close to you now."
"You're a nerd Merle," Dryden commented from the passenger seat. With a nod, she laughed at him.
Millerna piled onto Merle and Hitomi and Van joined them. Allen started driving and Millerna leaned forward in her seat to talk to him. Dryden glanced over at her from the passenger seat and she winked at him. He raised his eyebrows but smiled still.
"I think Dryden's still got it bad for 'Lerna," Merle said into Hitomi's ear.
"He always has," she whispered back, giggling.
When they arrived at Van's, they all piled out except Allen and Millerna. They were going to get a movie so it left the rest of them ten minutes to make popcorn, get drinks and do random little things. Hitomi saw Merle touch Dilandau's arm and say something to him, inclining her head away from Van's house. He nodded and they started wandering that way.
"We're just going for a walk, we'll be back in a few!" Dilandau called as Merle shot Hitomi a scared look. She grinned back, giving her a thumbs up.
The other three ambled slowly up the steps. Van opened his door and Dryden stepped inside. Mr Fanel called out a greeting to him and Mrs Fanel came and kissed Hitomi on both cheeks gushing about how she hadn't seen her forever! Would she be staying the night? With a look at Van, Hitomi confirmed that she would be and Mrs Fanel rushed off saying she needed to put some conditioner in the bathroom and change the towels.
"Your mom's cool, man," Dryden said after she had sent them downstairs saying she would make popcorn and send down the others when they arrived.
Soon enough they arrived. Merle trotted down the stairs looking flushed. She muttered something about how Dilandau would be a couple minutes before flopping down into a chair. Sure enough, he came down the stairs with a chattering Millerna. His face was white and he avoided looking at anyone.
Even though everyone could feel it, no one mentioned the tension growing between the seven of them. It was the closest they had ever come to being separated. And it was without one word. They were in the same room, all within inches of each other. Yet, they did not reach out to question to tension, to ease it. They let it grow until the movie playing in front of them was forgotten and all were lost in their own thoughts.
Millerna was thinking about Merle and Dilandau of course. She was not wholly focused on them though. Half of her being was focused on the beautiful blonde sitting beside her and letting her lean on him. She tried to clear her thoughts as his fingers lazily travelled up and down her arms but found it impossible. Closing her eyes, she willed everything away.
Dryden's mind was filled, as it often was, with Millerna. He was probably the most focused on the movie, though he was consciously aware of Allen's fingers tracing up and down Millerna's arms, sometimes coming up to touch her face and neck. He could feel the tension almost crackling between Merle and Dilandau but he had no idea what caused it or how deep it really went.
Van sat on his chair with Hitomi on top/in front of him. Both arms were wrapped around her from behind and she was leaning her head on his shoulder, watching, just watching the emotions play out on the faces of all her friends. It was almost as if she could perceive what they were thinking, and through her, Van could too. He instinctively knew, with no words, that the tension wasn't between Millerna and the struggle over her. It was between the pink haired girl on the floor in front of him with her face in her hands and the blonde boy lurking somewhere in the shadowed corners of the room. Hitomi turned her face to look at him and lying on hand on his cheek, he understood what she would do.
Merle didn't want anyone to see. She couldn't take it if they knew that she was crying. So she lay alone, hoping they believed, yet knowing they didn't, that she was fine. That everything was fine. She could still taste the words that had been flung from her to Dilandau and back. They tasted like something bitter. Something bitter only time could ease.
Allen's mind wasn't with really with him. He was ecstatic at the recent closeness Millerna had allowed him yet still tentative, because couldn't it, like so many other things in his life, be taken away in just one moment? He looked at Dilandau. Took in Merle's stance. He knew something was happening. And it was tearing them all apart.
It's impossible to say what was really spinning through Dilandau's head at that moment. It was hard to say what he was thinking even on a normal day. Even he didn't know what he was feeling. He blamed himself. Why had he been careless enough to let something like that happen between him and Merle? Standing at the back of the room, he dragged his fingers through his white-blonde hair and let out a shuddering breath.
With a fluid movement, Hitomi had freed herself from Van's grasp and seemingly slid through the shadows to grasp Dilandau's hand. She dragged him easily through the house and out the back door. They stood in the dark, Hitomi trying to grasp all she could just by his body language, and Dilandau trying to hide it all. Then she reached up and grasped him around the neck gently. Without words, Hitomi pulled his head down a bit and embraced him. When his arms finally wrapped gratefully around her, she felt him shaking and for the first time in her life, felt older than he was.
They swayed for several moments gently, without really knowing it. Then Hitomi broke away, she looked up into her friends face and said, in a broken sounding voice, "Dilly, what happened?"
"I -" he choked, "I - don't know."
"What did Merle say?" Hitomi's hand rested on his cheek and one of his came up to hold it there.
"We - we did something bad, 'Tomi."
His silver looking eyes glinted down at her in the dark and she felt something wet on her hand. A single tear had escaped down Dilandau's face. Hitomi pulled him into a tighter embrace than before and whispered soothing words into his ear.
"I know what you did, Merle told us. There hasn't been any lasting damage."
Dilandau broke away from her and took a step back, shaking his head. "Nothing you can see," he rasped. "I only took her innocence, Hitomi. And it hurts because neither one of us remembers it. We don't know where to go from here! What do we do? Pretend like it never happened? Acknowledge that it did?" His hands shook as he again ran them through his hair. "I just wanna run. Get out of here forever."
"Then run," Hitomi said. "Run. Just don't run forever."
As Dilandau walked around the side of the house to the front of the house, he took deep breaths trying to calm his jangling nerves. In the lamplight his blonde hair glowed and he looked almost ethereal.
"Tell her I'm sorry," he whispered as he stepped closer to Hitomi. "Tell her that I love her."
Then he turned and took a few steps walking. Slowly he broke into a run and kept running until Hitomi lost sight of him. She sank to the pavement and put her head onto her knees. There was a hand on her shoulder and she looked up to see the rest of them there.
There was a certain tone of sadness as she and Van watched Millerna, Dryden, Merle, and Allen pile into his van and drive off.
If you had watched from the distance, you would have seen the dark haired figure come around the front of the smaller, lighter one and wrap his arms lovingly around her. In the lamplight, you could see her close her eyes and just let herself be held for a moment. You would have seen him rain kisses lightly down on her shoulder and neck as she grasped his hair. Yet even from a distance, you would see that this was not a passionate exchange in anyway. It was the bond of being able to communicate just through body language. It was him telling her that she would be safe, that everything would be all right. It was two people leaning on each other for support.
It was love.
(A/N: Okay my dears, this is it, second last chapter. I thought and thought and thought and THOUGHT about how to end it! So here's a bit of info that will just help you understand a bit though you might question how it could apply to the story in any way:
Remember how Millerna mentions the grade twelve picture early on in this chapter? Well, if you don't, go up and reread it. The grade twelve picture is something that happens at my school every year. A photographer comes to the school and they bring the seniors out in a huge group and take a picture from on top of a building of all of them. It's not formal, just them posing how they want to, with friends, alone, whatever.
And you may notice how this chapter was slightly angst, had an undertone of despair almost; yeah, sorry about that! I don't know what hit me, just decided to write it like that. Next chapter will be long, probably the longest chapter I've ever written because there will be no epilogue for this story. I'll try to wind it up, throw some fluff in for those who want it, cross the T's, dot the I's, you know, last chapter things. And for any of you who like Peter Pan, go read the new story I started on him, it'll be my focus when this is done! Here's the link for you if you're too lazy to go click on it: !!)