Remember!!!: Viaresu=Bierrez…and Viales/Vierres/Biaresu. XP If you're still confused (yeah I know you are), er...email me...or...something...AIM: BunnyxRathSlayer/chibitotoroPLUSH
With the idea of using Bierrez to further his own purposes, Kharl resurrects the yôkai and sends him after Rath. However, Bierrez has some ideas of his own, and an unfulfilled task to complete… [First Bierrez/Cesia fic on Fanfiction.net!] UnfulfilledBy Rurouni Chaos (formerly shinsetsu no kokoro...ahem...)
Chapter Four: Reminiscence
"Hey...is he ok? He's not...dead...right?"
"How am I supposed to know? I'm not a damn doctor!"
"Aw, shaddup...he's coming round, anyhow..."
His head throbbed. Not the most pleasant of awakenings, Viaresu thought fuzzily, and sat up. He paid dearly for even that small movement as dark dots spun crazily before his eyes. Slowly, painfully, his vision swam back into focus, revealing the sole room of a claustrophobic hovel, darkened and musty. A face appeared in his line of vision, a dirty-faced teenager who stared at him curiously.
"Hey, are you—yaaaah!!" The boy flopped helplessly in Viaresu's grip, trying futilely to tear strong fingers from his shirt collar. The thin fabric tore with a loud rending sound, followed by an even louder thud as the youth dropped ungracefully, face first, into the dirt floor. The two other humans in the room, both boys of about the same age as the first, backed away nervously.
"You didn't hafta do that, ya know," one spoke up. "We were trying to help..." His eyes slid to his companion, who was scuttling backwards on all fours, not bothering to pick himself up first. "And you tore Raico's shirt," he added in complaint.
"Where is this?" Viaresu asked, ignoring the boy's question.
"Uh...Draqueen...south side of the city. That's where we found you. You looked dead, so we just dragged you in here." The teen's voice rose to a wheedling whine. "And so here we were doing that to help you and you wake up and attack us..."
"Enough," Viaresu interrupted brusquely, with just enough suggestion of a growl in his voice to shut the boy up. "How far is the Dragon Palace from here?"
"Dragons?" The first boy—Raico, his friend called him—had slid
forward, listening with interest to the dialogue, and now he spoke up
eagerly. "The Dragon Tribe? You mean you're..." His eyes flicked to
Viaresu's pointed ears, to his strange eyes, and lingered still longer on the
glints of silver on his gauntlet and necklace, "...a Dragon? The palace is a few miles up north," he
added as an afterthought.
"No. Thank you for the directions, if they're accurate." Standing, Viaresu wrenched the door open with a soft squelch of rotting wood. Cold air blew in, diffusing the odor of unwashed human and decaying food in the cramped room. He stepped out.
The three boys stared silently after their departed visitor, a figure growing steadily smaller in the distance. At last, Raico spoke up, his voice accompanied by the rhythmic squeaking of the broken door. "So that means you're a demon?"
Right back where I started. Viaresu cursed quietly as he made his way out of the slums of Draqueen, picking carefully through heaps of garbage thrown haphazardly about and puddles of dirty water caused by backed-up sewage ditches. The stink of human civilization gone wrong pervaded his senses, and the demon wrinkled his nose in disgust—both at the smell and at his own failure.
He would have to go back again, try again, before any more time was wasted—
No, Viaresu amended, slowing his walk a little. First, I need some sort of plan. That had been his mistake the first time; he'd just imagined getting in and getting out, not allowing room for any sort of obstacle at all. This time he would have a real plan.
On the outskirts of Draqueen and near the gates of the Dragon Palace, a single yôkai slid into the shadows and began to plan.
*****
Rath rocked back and forth on his heels. He licked his lips nervously, glancing at the glossy head of black curls. Why am I this nervous? Why should I be scared of her?!
He winced. He knew. Cesia was scary, no other word for it. Sometimes it seemed that she blew up at the slightest provocation, over things that puzzled him to no end. And with the power that that girl had, getting her ticked off at you was not a smart thing to do. Rath teased her often enough, sure, but he had also learned her limits and tried not to cross them. He was successful, too...well, most of the time.
One powerful wind sorceress... Should he tell her about Viaresu? There was always the chance, however slight, that the yôkai would get past him somehow and attempt once more to lay his hands on Cesia's powers. Hell knew Viaresu was crafty enough.
One powerful, pissed off wind sorceress... If Rath did tell her, he was ready to bet his sword on the fact that Cesia would explode. Literally. And unless some miracle occurred, he was also ready to bet that some of that anger would be falsely directed towards a certain innocent or two...namely himself. Of course, if she found out about it anyway, and then found out that he had known but not told her...well, that was a chance that Rath was simply going to have to take. His mind made up, Rath did a smart about-face and headed away from Cesia's rooms, determined that she should never know.
Unfortunately, a rather attractive and expensive-looking vase dashed Rath's impressive plan to smithereens. To be precise, the vase dashed itself to smithereens as well, producing a fairly loud crash of shattered porcelain...
"Who's there?? Orien...Griff, Captain? Your Majesty?"
Damn that girl and her yôkai hearing...(still, even Rath had to admit to himself that only a stuffed frog could possibly have not heard that crash). As soft, cautious footsteps drew nearer, Rath pasted on the guileless smile that had worked so well on the Dragon Queen and Officers when he was younger and cuter. He crossed his fingers and hoped for the best.
Ah, but he wasn't so young and cute anymore.
"What the hell are YOU doing here?" Feet planted, hands on hips, and, ouch, Rath winced, a fire in her eyes that boded ill for him...
"You better not be sneaking around spying on me...again! For your information, you won't find any yôkai to fight around here; so sorry to spoil your plans. Viaresu is dead and gone—..."
He leapt at the chance to divert her attention. "Oho, Viaresu again?" Rath didn't really have to ask; her face was enough to tell the tale. As Cesia spoke the word 'dead', her lips tightened curiously. Her voice trailed off, and a little of the anger died out of her eyes. The dragon knight had just a second to catch an oddly un-Cesia-like look on her face before she resumed her tirade.
"Yes, so what about it? I can't mention him at all even though you're still drooling over the memory of that great yôkai fight?"
Defensive...Rath noted with a hunter's careful eye for weakness. Too defensive for something as trivial as that.
"...Anyways, that's beside the point," Cesia was continuing. "I still can't believe you were spying on me again! God, Rath, you are so—"
Hurrying to stem the flow of her angry rebuke, Rath butted in with another question. "What exactly was your relationship with Viaresu?"
Arrgh. He could have slapped himself. How stupid did he have to be to keep bringing up a topic so dangerously close to the one he was trying to avoid? He was going to have to tread carefully from here on out...but even that danger didn't make his curiosity any less intense.
To his surprise, the question provoked no furious outburst. It was Cesia, now, who seemed uncomfortable with the conversation. "Nothing."
Rath snorted derisively. "Yeah, right."
She glared; sighed; plopped herself on the ground across from him. "You want the full story? I'll tell you. Viaresu…Viaresu was…"
"He was what?" Rath prodded helpfully, only earning himself another angry glare.
"I never asked for him to hang around me all the time," Cesia said quickly. "…He was just there. After awhile, I got used to him." She paused, smiling wryly. "He wasn't exactly what you'd call, well, nice. But he wasn't like Nadil's other youkai, either. He treated me like…like a person."
Cesia shifted, looking no longer at Rath but at the ground. He couldn't read her expression, but her voice when she spoke was bitter. "I was Nadil's weapon, his precious jewel. Every youkai knew about me. Every youkai either wanted me to enhance their own power, or they wanted to use me to prove how loyal they were to Nadil."
Then the bitterness left her voice, to be replaced with a thoughtful, almost dreamy quality. "That time I first met Viaresu…he saved my life."
Rath looked at her sharply, startled. She seemed not to notice, still staring downwards.
"Of course I thought he was just another wannabe trying to use me to get something from Nadil. But I didn't want to die, so I went along with him. He went through all these heroics, even got his friends killed; that didn't surprise me: Nadil's youkai are ruthless when it comes to gaining prestige. What did surprise me is when we made it out of there alive, he never stayed around to collect a reward from Nadil. It was like he didn't care about it." Her tone dripped disbelief.
Cesia swung around, facing Rath again. "You asked me what Viaresu was? Viaresu was different. Different from all the youkai; different from anyone I've ever known."
But I already know that. A quick flash of Viaresu's last plea before he had surrendered himself—surrendered!—rang in Rath's ears for a moment. I know he's different. What I want to know is what that meant to you.
Too late, he realized that Cesia was still speaking. The dragon knight hurriedly tuned in again.
"He came back to visit me a lot when I lived with the witch. I have no idea how he found me. And I still had no idea why he'd left me without taking his reward." She scowled. "He would never tell me anything at all! I swear he did it just to make me angry. After a couple of years, I stopped asking him why. And I found out that Viaresu was fun to tease. He got mad so easily," she added, laughing softly.
"So you were friends?" Rath blurted out accusingly before he could stop himself.
It was a bad move. Cesia's smile dropped with the suddenness of a door being slammed shut. "Yes, maybe we were. You got your answer, and that's it. Isn't that what you wanted, Rath Iryuuzaa? You may leave now."
"Is that what you really want, Rath…Iryuuzaa?"
The similarity was stunning, shocking. Rath offered no resistance as Cesia pushed him down the hallway towards his own rooms. It was only after she had already shut the door behind him that he recovered enough to stare after her.
"You said you were friends," he called, knowing she couldn't hear. "But wasn't it more than that?"
End Chapter Four
A/N: I'm a Viaresu/Cesia shipper. Good gosh, answer that question yourself. Or perhaps I'm tormenting you purposely and I mean something different. Meheheheh. P