Hey, guys! I know! I deserve to be locked in a box and thrown into the Atlantic Ocean for not writing for so long and then giving such a bad cliffhanger! Well, just like I promised! Welcome to the 21st chapter! I'm sorry the last chapter was so short and had a less than satisfying ending…^_^;;
Disclaimer: Man, it's been forever since I've written one of these! HAHAHAHA! Yes! I own all of the Escaflowne characters! * WHACK * (Bozena nurses a large bump on her head while her shoulder angel stands in the background with a large Shinai) …I don't own anything from Escaflowne…*sweatdrop * *glare *
'Kay, I'll shut up now so you can get to the good parts. BTW, I love you, Coudygirl7!
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"Selena!" Allen crashed through the doors, his sky blue eyes flashing intensely. "Millerna needs your help. The countries surrounding Fanelia have attacked…under Zaibach's flag. Wounded are already being brought to the medical center." Allen stopped abruptly and realized that he was speaking to thin air. He had sent Selena to guard Aronic, right? But the chamber room that had served as the Draconian's cell was empty.
Allen suddenly heard a small sound. He whipped around, ripping his sword from its sheath.
Selena was curled up in a corner of the room, crystalline tears running down her cheeks.
"Selena! What happened?" Allen rushed towards her. A hiccup shook her chest and she quickly dashed a hand across her eyes.
"Big brother…" Selena collapsed into his open arms. "It's Aronic! She was innocent! I swear she was innocent. She didn't mean to hurt Van-sama or Hitomi-sama." Allen jerked back and stared into blue eyes that were identical to his own.
"But—but Lady Aronic said that something really terrible had happened to Van and Lady Hitomi. She took Kemen and left!" Selena tore her anguished gaze from her brother's. "I didn't stop them…I wouldn't stop them! If—if Van and Hitomi really are in trouble, Aronic will help them!"
Allen wrapped his arms tightly around Selena's shoulders and said soothingly in her ear, "It's okay. It doesn't matter now. We—we have to concentrate on the problem in front of us. Van is strong, and there's nothing he and Hitomi can't handle. Aronic can have that dragon boy. We don't need her here complicating things anyway." Allen looked away.
At first, Selena looked offended by Allen's rough speech, but slowly she realized what he was trying to say without breaking the incomprehensible codes of chivalry a knight followed. He couldn't help Van or Hitomi right now. Frankly, everyone was facing his or her own problems right now. Fanelia was bearly holding up under the onslaught of armies. But---Allen was secretly glad that Aronic had escaped. If she was going to help Van, he could put all the past mistrust he had against the Draconians on hold. In fact, Selena suspected that if Allen thought Aronic could help Van and Hitomi, wherever they were, he would have booted Aronic out of her "prison" himself. Selena grinned into Allen's shoulder.
"Isn't Millerna waiting for us---you?" Selena sniffed and tucked a light blonde lock of hair behind her ear in a characteristic gesture. A strangled exclamation burst from Allen's lips.
"You love her, don't you, brother?" Selena whispered in his ear.
He paused, " I don't know… For a long time, I think I was just seeing Marlene every time I looked at Millerna, but…I ----I want her. I want to always be with Millerna… not Marlene. I want to always protect her. I want her to always be smiling at me, Millerna's smile, not Marlene's. I want to protect her always…Dryden can't have her!" Selena smiled and hugged Allen.
"I know, Brother." Selena stood up, her face lit again by happiness. "Come on, we have a war to fight. We can't let Van or Lady Hitomi come back to find everything they've worked so hard for go to waste! I know Aronic has something planned. She is a very smart Lady."
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Hitomi wrapped her arms around Van's shoulders and gripped with all her desperation and might. Dispassionately, she stared blankly at her death...and Van's death. That was what the mysteriously turning blackness of the Fate Alteration Machine was, right? Emperor Dornkirk had released the true power of the Fate Alteration machine and everyone started killing each other…dying…. fighting. That terrible machine that destroyed the Draconians meant nothing but death.
But…Van had rescued her through the Fate Alteration Machine…. Hitomi felt a small sad smile lift the corners of her mouth. She would never forget the look in Van's eyes when he had finally found her and broke through the Fate Alteration Machine's grasp to save her. A look of relief, concern, sadness, hope…love. His red amber colored eyes are gorgeous…
But Van was barely standing now, and she felt so hopeless. Hitomi couldn't save Van like he had saved her. All she could do was hold on to him tight and embrace that terrible emptiness inside of him.
The colder and emptier the space she found in the nonexistent place that connected her and Van, the more she poured everything she had into it, nothing held back.
Slowly, everything that was Hitomi, her hopes, her disappointments, her laugh, her habit of tucking one strand of hair behind her ear, her elation every time she raced around a track everything, was starting to seep into the dark nothingness, merging with it. Slowly transforming it…
"I think that's enough, Rianne," A strong voice range out. Aronic…It's Aronic, Hitomi dimly realized with surprise.
The Draconians around Aronic parted, bowing slightly as she passed. A small boy with inhuman eyes and damp, delicate wings that were barley hidden by Kemen's small shoulders, balanced on the small Draconian's hip.
"This had gone far enough. You're being ridiculous, Rianne."
Rianne's deep forest eye's narrowed with hatred, "Who gave you leave to call me without a title! You go too far, Aronic! Don't interrupt this! This is our chance to take revenge on the ones who exiled us. It's our chance to get away from here, and you have no say here! It's just like you to act so blasé during something so important!"
Aronic snorted in exasperation, but when real concern flashed through her expression when her gazed passed over Van and Hitomi, broken and hanging on by a thread, teetering above the unknown, frightening depths of the Fate Alteration Machine.
"You're wrong. I do have a say here. I say that you can't expend your wrath on Gaea and call it revenge. It would make you no better than those who exiled us here. Besides…Rianne, they're gone. You've forgotten how short life is for them. The people who exiled us and killed your beloved are these people's ancient ancestors. They probably don't even have record of something from so many generations ago. How could you punish the new people of Gaea for a crime they did not commit?" Aronic shifted her weight and bounced Kemen up on her hip.
"Look at this little one, Rianne. We haven't seen a boy as precious as this in centuries. He's a dragon seer, the human child of a Fanelian dragon. Rianne, you know as well as I do that these children are extremely rare because they are only ever born when there is peace." Aronic glanced over her shoulder and her voice became louder, the presence of her resonant voice filling every corner of the harshly lit room.
"Will any one of you deny this child?" She addressed the Draconians through their intense celestial light. "These two humans…" Aronic nodded towards Van and Hitomi, "were able to break their destiny of war, even after the Ultimate Mode of Destiny was set. They've begun peace without us, and I think it's time we stopped being their demons and went back to Gaea…as their friends.
Even I had forgotten for so long that these people are like us, because no one of them are the same. There are good humans, bad humans, greedy humans, and brave humans, but I won't stand to see anyone play with their lives like they're less than we are. That was where we went wrong the first time, and unlike these humans, our memory reaches far…except for this one." Aronic grinned and gestured behind her back at the young Draconian named Darik. Darik choked on a laugh and several Draconians tried to hide smiles.
"So, except for that impertinent youngling…" Aronic turned to face the Draconians and her expression became serious, "I cannot stand by to see anyone do this. Even my own sister." Aronic gave her sister, Rianne, a long look over her shoulder. "We can go back to Gaea, under the rule of the Draconian King! And we will finally be at peace!" Aronic walked purposefully toward the dais where to stories up, Van barely stood, and knelt. Behind her Darik let out a cheer, followed by the growing approval of the other Draconians.
Tears slowly collected in Rianne's beautiful, anguished gaze. "I hate you," she whispered, her eyes fixed on Aronic.
Without warning she jumped forward to shove Van and Hitomi off the tower, sending them plunging towards the swirling depths of the Fate Alteration Machine below. She turned her intense glare of betrayal towards Aronic, folded her huge wings gracefully behind her and dived in after them.
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It finally registered to Hitomi that they were falling. As if in slow motion, she watched the black, turning space in the Fate Alteration Machine get closer and closer. She was so tired, so spent; she couldn't even lift her head anymore.
Hitomi's gaze fell back to Van's closed eyes. She pressed herself against him, feeling his chest rise in a breath and the pulse in his neck beat. Hitomi realized that she really had given everything she had to him. She was no longer herself. The very essence of her was filling the void in him that his sadness, helplessness, anger and despair of failure had created. She had given him everything, her heart, her love her soul, even the very breath her chest struggled and fought for…maybe now…she was free.
In that moment, something broke inside of her, a glass barrier shattered. The drained, empty space in her was filled by pulsing warmth. Flashes of images and knowledge invaded her thoughts. She saw Atlantis…
There was a burning along her back and muscles Hitomi didn't know she had stretched and contracted. The bright, slivery light of wings, true, full Draconian wings wrapped around her, and suddenly she was hovering above the Fate Alteration Machine, still embracing Van. Hitomi's still seemed to glow from the inside, a pearly, translucent light. All the sparkles and shadows in her eyes faded till they were only bottomless pools of color.
So this is true peace. I-- I am peace. True escape from the bloody destiny of man, what the bloody, beaten half-angel in her arms had strived for so long, she was his dream for the future.
Hitomi looked into each face of angel. When her gaze left them, each Draconian wore a strange expression, like they had been touched by something truly beautiful and truly terrible.
Hitomi knew now what every Draconian knew from birth. The Fate Alteration Machine wasn't evil. It was a tool, originally made to help people, to reach into their minds and remove the fate of war and bloodshed, of unhappiness. Unfortunately, too much power can be corrupted easily. Slowly, the Draconians discovered after they had tried to tamper with Fate, that without sorrow, no one can really know happiness. Because without darkness… how would anyone really know what light is?
The angel slowly smiled down at Hitomi's love. "Be at peace," she whispered, her face close to his. Hitomi's voice had changed. It rang, striking the same awe and fear as a storm, as gently as a hum of a sleeping baby, and wisdom coloring every word.
For one eternal second, everything was still except for the beat of Hitomi's glowing white wings and gently floating feathers. Then her wings slowly disappeared into a shower of soft, white feathers. Every breath in the hall was held as two figures slowly arched and gracefully fell, vanishing beneath the surface without a ripple.
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Okay, explanation time! Yes, Hitomi is now a Draconian, who I have affectionately named "peace" (I love irony ^_^) Yes, she and Van are now having a pool party with my villain, Rianne. Yes, there is now a war going on with Fanelia and every other country on Gaea (don't want to list them all out) No, I have not forgotten about Hitomi's family, Yukari or Amano. No, I haven't forgotten our little problem that Hitomi and Van are having trouble staying on the same planet. Yes, Allen and Millerna are hooked up. Yes, Dryden and Celina are hooking up. Yes, I still have a load of surprises to give you. Yes, there is only approximately 2 chapters left, and finally, yes, I AM a firm believer in HAPPY endings!