Disclaimer: Man, if I owned Dragon Knights, Kawaiikon would actually sell DK stuff... I'm still irritated about that...
Warnings: Uh... Fluff? Go back and look at the first chapter again, just briefly before you read this... :had fun with that: Actually, if you get really bored, try find all the different references to things from previous chapters. XD I had a little TOO much fun with this...
A/N: It's all over. T-T Yes, that's right. This story is finally finished. And She Said Yes is the my most played song, because of my putting it on repeat as I type on this. See? It's playing right now.
Well, I'm going to ramble up here for a bit because... Well... I finally finished a longer fic. :happy:
If anyone remembers, I started this last summer when in Germany. Because I was bored and suffering fanfiction withdrawals. I thought that posting the final chapter at the beginning of this summer would be appropriate, so here it is.
The first day of summer vacation and the last chapter of this story.
I'd like to take this opportunity to both give a BIG thanks to everyone who reviewed, and again to Kat for posting the first couple chapters for me. This story has the most total reviews out of any of mine, and I'm really amazed at how some of you have been here from the very first posting.
Basically?
I love you all.
No, really. I do.
And to prove it, I'm keeping a promise I made in SSY's original summary.
See?
I do love you.
:n:
When She Said Yes
:n:
That particular night was anything but silent.
While music no longer blared festively, the lighthearted chatter was now a rumbling surge as the student body poured out of the two open doors of the old school gymnasium. Neon lights lit up the commonly trodden pathways outside the building. Trails of pupils raced past them, winding in groups of threes and fours, talking excitedly about that night's past events, and shivering in the sudden cool air. Streamers of crepe paper danced in the rush, a rouge strand fluttering down from the green and white curtain that marked the gaping doorways. A water fountain was strategically stationed nearby, still surrounded by flushed and talkative young teenagers, waiting their turn in line while exchanging teasing jabs and ecstatic squeals of information.
Inside the gym, the main lighting system was flickering on, the dim glow of the prior hours fading away into the background with the memory of the music. The dense shadows along its extremities vanished into the sudden light, empty metal bleachers glinting in the false-sun. The flash brought with it the instant shock of realization, the questioning thought of "what now?"
And of the students still remaining in the building, some of them were better at handling it than others.
As a drifting white feather swirled off to one side of the room, Rath took a step back. The blush that had vanished almost completely from his easy-to-redden face jerked back in full at the realization that Cesia's hand was still in his.
He felt his blood rise, bringing warmth to his face, and was reminded vaguely of how not five minutes ago he had felt a similar battle of fire and ice: of how the orange edges of light had danced just out of his grasp. The darkness... The chill...
It wasn't gone.
But it was pushed further back for a moment in time.
And Rath felt for a fleeting moment as though he could reach out and physically pull down the power that seemed to dart around their forms; that he could hold a glistening sphere of flame in his palm.
His slight smile broadened, and Cesia took note of it, watching distractedly as her own face lit up into a beaming grin.
For a darting second, she could see fully into his mind, further than just the deepened emotions that were usually available to her.
She felt light, weightless, airy, free.
Free to fly up forever into the star-crested night, no restraints upon her body.
And she found herself talking lightheartedly in the sudden reality, speaking out loud even as she wondering silently what reality really was, anyway.
Her voice was clear in the emptying gym.
"It's not like this really matters."
Rath started, staring at her, completely bewildered.
The faded floorboards beneath their feet watched his faltering form. Dust and sand and hardened tears created their roughened glaze and they stayed silent, waiting.
Cesia smiled, relishing the feeling of ice cracked through with a golden glow, and spoke again, her words softer.
"We still have time."
He felt himself talking, felt the shaky whispered words spilling over his quickly moving lips, felt his hand tighten around hers. Felt their hearts beat as one in a spontaneous synchronization.
"I... I want..."
Twin battles raged within his mind, a swirling vortex of fire and ice, each hissing their own conflicting and defensive messages. They roared to a head...
And devoured each other, exploding into a suddenly tense urge, taunt with desire and the shattering of the restraining spell of confusion and dark into millions of tiny shards. They were as pinpricks of light in the velvet sky, scattering into the distance.
Reality was now.
Black hair edged his vision as Rath suddenly pulled her closer to him, crushing his mouth to her own, slightly opened in a pure shocked surprise. They both felt her startled gasp, and the rush of red flame as Cesia wrapped her free arm across his shoulders, pressing her body up firmly against his.
And the lone white feather lifted up on a low breeze as two joined hearts winged their way upwards, stealing through the vanishing cheap tinfoil that had previously encircled them in a barred cage of steel.
That particular night was anything but silent.
Nervous laughter wracked the suddenly illuminated gymnasium as Kitchel, once frozen, stepped back, feeling the sudden and unaccustomed flush on her face.
While she had been begging for a... Chance, a bet, an improvisation, she had not been expecting his innocent brush of lips or her out of character reaction.
And this, some far corner of her mind noted, Was not the poker face she had readied.
It was just a game.
She started talking out loud, her ramblings becoming more and more audible, though still muted.
A game constantly won.
"It's just a friggin' dance. Who cares? I don't."
"No worries. No tears, no pain..."
A voice started to trickle through her consciousness, whispering of unnecessary bluffs; of lies of full house when one already held a royal flush.
And she fell suddenly silent.
This was a glimpse out of place, a beat out of time, a world beyond that which they were supposed to be trailing their steps in.
Where she had earlier felt the most certain she had ever been in her life, she was shaken. This edging out into unknown waters was unnerving, and she remembered the truth behind the prior emulated freedom.
It hadn't been a game she was forced into, but one of her own choosing.
And this...
Then her mind drifted slowly to not the liplocked teenagers breaking the school's PDA rules, but the young boy, red in the face, tentatively holding his hand out to the girl at the water fountain.
And Kitchel took a deep breath, ignoring the script, the lines, the dry reading, and stepped closer once again, her green eyes now shining teasingly.
She gave a sudden laugh: shaky but meant.
"...Great."
As she had stepped back, he had jerked away as well, clenching his hand into a tight fist and giving his head a tight, controlled shake, sending the longer autumn colored segments of his hair flying.
He had muttered, "Damn stupid," running his hand through his hair in an of-used nervous gesture, pressing the ball of his hand into the bridge of his nose for a moment, then dropped it.
Thats smiled coldly, four syllables running through his mind for the umpteenth time that night. He spoke to himself, ignoring her slightly frantic ramblings, rolling the syllables out into the tainted oxygen.
"No one to ask."
His hand shook slightly and he continued to speak, absentminded acting drawing through his mind.
It was curious.
"Maybe I'll go outside..."
It was then that he heard her speak warmly and directly to him, his eyes lighting upon her own smiling ones, crystalized in amber light.
"...Great."
Kitchel spoke again.
"Come on. Unless you don't want to, of course."
Thats felt a wry grin tug on his lips. To be a gambler, one needed to be able to make decisions at the roll of a die.
He took her hand once more. This time, their grip was relaxed.
The red curtain fell for one last time.
"Let's go."
That particular night was far from silent.
Fear had been spread thickly across the room.
It had created a wave of tension that washed across the shaking floor, drenching all that it touched, drowning lost souls beneath its icy currents.
A lucky few had been spared of the rushing spray, and a few more had managed to claw their way out of it.
Sea salt and salty tears dried and flaked off in the newly rising sun, evaporating in the appearing warmth.
While many drifters had latched on to the falsified images of captured suns in glass-spun cages and fire burning in translucent boxes, a few had managed to stumble across their own sunrises.
The dark of the outside night was cast with beaming stars, ones not constricted by cages or wrapped in glass. And some of the perfect white orbs had found themselves drawn down by a trailing wish, sinking into deepened blue pools.
Harbingers of dawn, of morning, of sun.
Dreams of golden cloudless skies and fields of fallen stars placed back into the shadows of simple fantasies still ran rampant in this strange limbo. They were captured and held safe, preventing souls from departing and leaving behind naught but mechanical dolls.
Faerie tale fantasy and pure silver glow was still needed in this changing hour, if to a lessened degree.
They fueled the drifting sands, paused in the act of sliding from one minute to the next. Peculiar white grains, so soft, lay in midair: Captured.
And Rune and Tintlett slowly parted.
Neither was looking straight at the other, both searching for a conceptual form of this strange intermediate space, of the moment before sunrise and the lull before the rush. Her gaze finally trailed back to his eyes, searching questioningly for recognition.
Blue met blue.
And yet... They seemed deeper.
He smiled tentatively at her, dropping his still-reaching arm down to his side.
Tintlett dipped her head very slightly in return, taking first one, then two slow steps backwards.
Their heads swirled with white-winged stars and paper-folded dreams and stopped glass bottles marked with faint scratchy inscriptions of both Luna and Sol.
Both were frozen for a long moment.
And then she turned, bare feet padding quietly on the varnished floorboards as she ran quickly across the near empty room, hurrying after her vanishing friends.
Her light voice rang out in the evaporating silence.
"Wait, Cesia!"
There was a faded crash and, outside, the full moon dipped slowly behind the gymnasium.
:n:
Hououza: Rambling is always good. n-n So it's nice for me that you ended up doing it by mistake anyway. XD I love that quote, by the way. "Being the only male here, the estrogen levels are making me nervous." Too bad I'll never be able to use that...
Ojosnegro: Eep... Just had my Spanish final... I keep impulsively wanting to add an "s" to your name... Aw! You need to read 14! ...Actually, I didn't care for 14-18 all that much. I mean, sure, they all had some good moments, and you really need to read them all before 19 so that it makes more of an impression on you, but... 19 was good, though. You need to read it!
Peridot-chan: I think I explained the name thing in some other fic... :ponders: Yeah, I did. I just don't remember which one. XD But it was in response to one of your other reviews, and I just decided to add it in. And haha. I didn't have to add anything for my aim account. :P No worries... This last chapter had a bit of everyone. :nod: So you didn't need to beg. And RxC actually got the longest segment. :was trying to make them all about the same:
Charna: Fluff is good, no? n-n I mean, it gets annoying if it's all you read and all, but... Every so often it's really nice. n-n
:n:
As before, a big THANKIES to all of you. non
And I'm going to take a brief moment down here to say something...
Now that I'm finished with SSY, I'm going to be starting something else that I've been really wanting to get around to for a while. Ever wonder what would happen if you change one point in DK, make it work out the way that... Well, in this example, the way Kharl wanted it to? It's the Butterfly Effect: everything else gets twisted. Okay, now take that and toss in an old dream I had and that 20 Theme challenge from LiveJournal.
That's what I'm going to be working on next.
In between updating everything else, of course(hopefully...)!
So, uh... Wish me luck on that, I suppose. :sweatdrop:
Mucho amo to everyone who actually got this far, and please review!