A Boy Brushed Red Chapter 2: Leave Your Dreams Behind, an escaflowne fanfic

A Boy Brushed Red
chapter two:leave your dreams behind

Thirteen years ago, Zaibach

"Are you ready, Miss Lucienne?" The sorcerer was trying to sound kind, even a 5-year-old could tell that, but it contradicted with every atom of his nature. The words were warm enough, but to the little girl it sounded harsh and ominous.

"She is ready." The General Adelphos gripped his daughter's shoulder tightly. "Lucienne, don't be afraid."

"Father-"

"If all goes well, I'll see you again. Don't be afraid."

"Father! Don't-!" The little girl's words were cut off as the sorcerers converged on her and strapped her down to the table. She screamed, a high-pitched child's scream that unexpectedly tugged at the general's heart, but he was resolved. It was for her own good, and his good, and the good of Zaibach. He never had much time for her anyway, and this was perhaps the best way to utilize her loneliness.

"FATHER!" she shrieked desperately, as the deep command of the lead sorcerer rang in the chamber.

"Alter fate."

xxx

On the Vione's viewing dock, two people gazed out the clear glass. One was tall and ominously wrapped in long black cloak that completely enveloped his body. The other was shorter, and of a slighter build. She dressed simply – dark pants and tall boots, a plain grey shirt, and a cream military-style jacket – and wore a sword at her side.

"So this is southern Artiza, Lord Folken?" Lucienne's voice, low and husky for a girl's, cut through the silence as she and Folken observed the burning countryside. It was a mountainous region, one of the poorest parts of Zaibach, and the people scraped by in the few fertile valleys. The terrain made it difficult for communication between the people, much less unity and armed rebellion. No one had seen it coming. That was why it was so effective – enough to warrant a floating fortress.

"Is this why you were brought onboard, Lady Lucienne?" the Strategos asked.

"You can drop the title, Lord Folken."

"Likewise, Lucienne. But I would prefer it if you answered my question."

"No. I am here by coincidence, but I doubt my presence will help you. In fact, the fact that their rightful ruler is here may incite the Artizans to further rebellion. The Adelphos family has not ruled this region for long, but we're not very popular."

"Your father is a firm leader."

"Which is your way of saying he's an asshole." Folken half-smiled.

"He does care for you," he said gently. Lucienne scowled.

"He handed me over to the sorcerers," she said bitterly. "I don't care what he feels. Folken, I despise the man."

"Lucienne, we cannot create our ideal future, free of war, if you are buried in hate."

The girl snapped her head up and glared at the Strategos with piercing dark blue eyes. With one deft motion, she unsheathed her sword and pricked her left thumb. Making sure Folken's eyes were focused on her movements, Lucienne smeared a thin red line of blood across her silver blade.

"I swear to you, Folken Lacour de Fanel. I swear to you that, at the end of all things, my father will die, and he will die by my hand." The Strategos closed his eyes and sighed.

"You should not make oaths lightly."

"I will keep my word."

"Well, there's nothing I can do about it." The Strategos gazed down at Lucienne. She should not have been exposed to the sorcerers. She was born with murder in her heart, and her past as a lab rat – even Folken didn't know exactly what they did to her – would only aggravate that. Lucienne looked innocent enough, with her pale skin and delicately refined features. When she put in effort, she could be downright beautiful – enough to rival the three princesses of Asturia, although they were golden and she had a cold, sharp beauty. In this respect, she was much like Dilandau. Underneath that shell of fragile beauty, there was an innate ability and capacity to kill.

"You really don't care?" she whispered.

"Lucienne, Dilandau is under my command. I have heard worse."

"Dilandau Albatou? I was betrothed to him for a time."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I might still be. But I think father is looking higher. Or he could have decided that he wants the house to remain not-on-fire for a couple more years."

The pounding of running feet on the hard floor jerked the two out of their quiet conversation. They turned to see a Dragonslayer – the impetuous one, Lucienne believed his name was Miguel – run inside, an urgent look on his face.

"Lord Folken! A rebel ship has forced entry! They're in the main guymelef hangar! We've got it under control but I'm under orders from Lord Dilandau to escort Lady Lucienne to a safe place." Folken noted, with a touch of amusement, that the Dragonslayer looked less than ecstatic to be babysitting a lady. Furthermore, Dilandau was relinquishing one of his men to look after a girl? Evidently, the boy cared more about his job evaluation that Folken had thought.

"Lady, this way, please. Don't be afraid." Miguel extended a hand towards Lucienne, which she regarded with contempt. She chuckled. The Dragonslayer looked confused. "Lady, don't worry, I'll take you somewhere safe."

"Huh. Not a chance." The girl had a fleeting smirk, then reverted to her usual passive face. "Come on, my strapping young lad, we're going to go say hello to some rebels."

With that, she grabbed Miguel's arm and all but dragged him out of the viewing dock, toward the sounds of battle. Folken sighed. She really shouldn't have been sent to the sorcerers.

xxx

Dilandau grinned as the rebel soldier parried his blow. His opponent was sweating, and the familiar tint of fear was beginning to show in his eyes. This was just play. Dilandau was getting bored.

With a single stroke and a sigh, the enemy was quickly dispatched. Dilandau glanced around the hangar. They were winning, of course, but not as quickly or decisively as he would have liked. His soldiers were doing well. Dalet was cutting through groups of five at a time, although that vain twit needed to slop flourishing his sword for no reason except that it looked good. Gatti was performing competently as always, although his movements were too stiff. Mercutio was laughing, swinging his long limbs around, recklessly hacking away. Of course, he was winning – Dilandau had to hand him that. Even Chesta, who found it easier to handle drunken Mercutio than a sword, was killing enemy soldiers, if not with ease, then without too much difficulty. Too bad he had to send Miguel to fetch that idiot girl.

The problem was with numbers. Somehow, the rebels had managed to disable the alarm system, so only those soldiers in the immediate vicinity were defending the fortress. It wasn't enough to counter the rebels quickly.

Something didn't smell right, Dilandau knew it in his gut. There was no way the rebels could win the fortress, or even inflict significant damage. If they had just been sent as a raiding party, there was no way they would have so many – too hard to maneuver, too hard to keep track of, too hard to move quickly. It was a pointless mission, unless…

Unless it was a diversion. A way to buy time for something. But what?

As the last thought flashed in his mind, Dilandau realized he had let his guard down. He felt the looming sensation of someone behind him. He turned around – a bear of a man with a coarse black beard was bearing down upon him, swinging a mace. Cursing, Dilandau tried to raise his hand and parry, but he knew he wasn't fast enough.

THWUMP.

The bearded man fell to the floor as something landed on him. Something that had just jumped from the catwalk a hundred feet up. Something that held a long silver sword that was now protruding out of the man's head.

"Yo."

The Adelphos girl's face, as dispassionate as ever, gazed up at his. Well, at least she wasn't asking for thanks. Then Dilandau might've killed her.

"I thought I sent an escort to take you somewhere safe," he growled, unable to control his annoyance. Stupid girl – he had sent Miguel away just for her! Just because she was Adelphos' precious daughter, she thought she could just have things her way. He hated girls who wanted to go battle for excitement. They were always useless and wound up getting in the way. Well, he didn't have time to baby-sit someone in the middle of a battle. "Get out of here!"

"I can take care of myself, dear," she said. "And your Hotty McHotpants is over there enjoying himself, so I'd hate to drag him away." She nodded towards Miguel, who was slashing open rebels with a faint look of glee on his face.

"Don't expect me to look after you."

"Please don't," she said simply, and suddenly lunged forward. Her blade connected with flesh, and Dilandau felt a body falling forward toward him. He turned around. Someone had tried to sneak up at him during their argument – and was now impaled through the throat.

"I'd pay more attention if I were you, Dilandau," said Lucienne. She promptly drew out her sword, and ran towards a rebel, as Dilandau seethed. How dare she humiliate him like this!

He didn't have much time to sulk. A young man ran up to him – he was about Dilandau's age, maybe younger, with sandy brown hair. He looked experienced. There was a scar that traced its way up his otherwise smooth cheek, and a look of fearlessness in his eyes. But then Dilandau raised his head and looked him in the eye, and smiled a wolfish smile, and the young man faltered, lost in the blood red of the captain's irises.

"Bye-bye," Dilandau whispered as he decapitated the boy. He laughed. It was a good day, he supposed.

xxx

"I didn't know girls could do that," said Chesta in an awed voice. He grimaced as Mercutio daubed his cheek with one of Folken's antiseptic potions. "Ahhh- that stings!"

"You'd think that if you can handle being cut open like that, you can take a little bit of antiseptic, Chesta," Mercutio said. The brunette Slayer had no wounds except for a couple on his hands that he had accidentally inflicted on himself. "My poor ickle Chesta, all beat up like that," he cooed teasingly.

"At least I'm not stupid enough to cut my own hand," Chesta retorted. Mercutio grinned and playfully kissed the blonde on the cheek. Chesta blushed a deep scarlet.

"Oh, you're so cute when you're being a mean sarcastic bastard. At least it didn't scar your pretty face."

"I, uh, didn't know that you were gay, Mercutio," said Gabriel. Gabriel was new, fresh out of training, and had yet to graduate from the hazing ritual the Dragonslayers inflicted upon the new recruits. It didn't help that his long silver hair and ice blue eyes gave him a glass-like quality. He had won more acceptance today – the Dragonslayers had blooded him for his first kill on the job – but he had yet to understand the social workings of the team.

"Gabe, Mercutio fawns over Chesta whenever Chesta yells at him for being stupid because sometimes Chesta gets so embarrassed that he runs and hides for the next several hours," Gatti explained. He had suffered a broken arm from a giant Artizian – and then, to pay it back, had disemboweled the burly man. Miguel was currently setting a splint for him.

"That was pretty amazing, though, the jump," said Miguel. "She was dragging me down the hall towards the hangar, then she sees Lord Dilandau about to be attacked, and then she just takes a flying leap off the catwalk!"

"Mmmm, all the more reason for Dalet to make kissy faces whenever she walks by," said Mercutio.

"Mercutio! I do not!" Dalet protested from his quiet perch near the window.

"Yes you do. You go like this." Mercutio scrunched his face up and pursed his lips.

"I don't know, Merc. It could just be his indigestion face," said Miguel. Gatti drew his breath sharply as Miguel accidentally poked his arm.

"You're just mad because I didn't get hurt at all," Dalet said haughtily, and Mercutio abruptly stopped laughing. "Just because you feel inferior as a swordsman, with your stupid flailing arms, you feel the need to smear both the Lady Lucienne and me just to make yourself feel-"

"Why would the Artizans attack, though?" Gabriel interrupted, prompted by Gatti, Miguel, and Chesta's urgent looks of fear. If Mercutio and Dalet had been allowed to continue, there was the very real possibility of physical violence. At the very least, their end of the Vione would be subjected to a screaming argument until Dilandau came and thoroughly beat the crap out of all of them. "Isn't Lady Lucienne their rightful ruler? Why would they attack a floating fortress with her onboard?"

"Her family's not very well liked here, and neither is the Zaibach Empire," Gatti said cautiously. Mercutio and Dalet were silenced, but they continued to glare daggers at each other. "The southern region of Artiza is very poor compared to the North. There's not much for farming in either portion, but the mountains in the south don't allow for much industrialization, either. Also, the south has a large number of ethnic Verali, who have never considered themselves truly Zaibachian. The Adelphos family hasn't ruled Artiza long, but they've firmly associated themselves with the north. They've established their capital there. In the past couple years, the south has suffered a famine, and the General hasn't done much to help. They probably tried to attack to take her hostage, or something."

"Thanks for that history lesson, Mr. Gatti," said Miguel. Gatti rolled his eyes, but at least the relations between Mercutio and Dalet were cooled.

Soon after, however, the long haired slayer jumped down from his perch and picked up his jacket/overskirt combination. He headed towards the door, taking a bottle of antiseptic on the way.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Chesta asked.

"I don't know. Kitchens."

"With antiseptic?" Miguel asked incredulously. "Planning on marinating some chicken? Here's my dish, I call it steak-and-poison?"

"I'm dropping it off at Dane's. You know the medical ward was running low before this whole fiasco."

"Say hi to Dane for me," was chorused by the various boys in the room. Mercutio turned around and grinned.

"And bring my regards to darling Lucienne."

xxx

Dalet let out a breath of relief as he escaped the barracks room. Mercutio had been ripping on him for the past three days, ever since Lucienne had arrived. He probably shouldn't have walked out – his friends already thought of him as rather aloof, and leaving the room to be alone probably wouldn't help. Still, what else was he going to do?

He had never been good with people. He could have been – he was born a gentleman, he had received tutoring on all the classical subjects, he was handsome and tall and charming – but he had never been able to utilize that charm to make lasting friendships. All his relationships had been superficial before he had run away from home, escaped from his abusive drunken father and abandoned his helpless mother. He had friends, but was not particularly close to them. They played pool occasionally. He could charm girls off their feet when he wanted to, but they rarely lasted more than a week.

Then he joined the Dragonslayers. It was more of a last resort than anything. His father's beatings had gotten worse, and the signs of the abuse were beginning to show to outsiders. His mother had urged him to get away – before he was killed. So, at the tender age of fourteen, he enlisted in the army. Now, the Dragonslayers were his family. He cared about them, he really did. But damn it, they should know when to stop!

He supposed he couldn't blame Mercutio. Lucienne was pretty. Mercutio thought that was the only reason he got flustered around her was because of that. It was a physical attraction for Mercutio, he was sure. Every time he saw her passing by in the corridors, the bold Slayer would bend down and kiss her hand, and subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) flirt. But Dalet had had his share of women, and all of them had been beautiful. With Lucienne, it was that quiet nonchalance, the way she had lazy smiled and thanked him after he had shown her to her quarters. It was the way she had flopped onto her bed without any pretensions, without any thought to decorum telling the both of them that it wasn't proper for a lady to be sprawled on a bed in view of a mere soldier. She was just a girl who was exhausted.

Dalet sighed. He should stop thinking like that. It only added fuel to Mercutio's biting comments. He really needed to stop think-

"Owww." Lucienne's voice wavered in the silent hall. Preoccupied with his thoughts, Dalet had walked straight into her, sending both of them tumbling onto the floor. Dalet panicked – she was going to think he was a clumsy dolt.

"I'm sorry, my lady! I'm sorry, I'm a fool, I should have watched-" he stammered, blushing. He probably sounded like an idiot.

"Lucienne," she said.

"What?"

"Lucienne. Call me that. Or Luc, if you're brave. Stop with all the lady business, it sounds stupid. Even that uptight Folken calls me by my name." Dalet stared at her, slightly shocked. A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth.

"Yes, my l…I mean, Lucienne."

"Hmph. You're one of Dilandau's pretty henchmen aren't you? Dalet? Dilandau's rather sketchy – I can see why all of you are young, but it's a bit too much of a coincidence that's you're all good-looking, isn't it? It's like the little nutcase has a boy harem."

Without even realizing it, Dalet had stood up, drawn his sword, and pointed the tip of the blade at Lucienne's throat in a flash. His hand trembled with anger. Lucienne looked surprised, but not alarmed – her eyes were on his face and not his sword.

"You won't speak about Lord Dilandau that way," he said, his voice quivering with rage.

"What did he do for you?" she whispered. "I've seen how he treats you. The bruise on your cheek hasn't fully healed yet."

"He is our patron. He gave us our guymelefs. We shouldn't even be here. This should be a unit of veterans, but he accepted us even though it was a risk. He took us based on talent instead of experience. We – none of us – will never forget the trust he placed in us in the beginning. We'll spend our lives – and maybe our deaths – repaying him."

"Why are you here, Dalet? You're a d'Orsay, Folken tells me. You have money to fall back on. Why be a soldier instead of a gentleman? Where is your family?"

"This is my family. The Dragonslayers, they're the first friends I've had who would die for me. And Lord Dilandau, he's harsh, but he would mourn my death, and avenge me, which is much more than could be said about any other captain. And I would die to defend him."

"Hmph. I see," said Lucienne softly, closing her eyes and smiling. "Pretty, but deadly." She grasped Dalet's sword, ignoring the pain as her blood colored his blade. He kept it sharper than she expected. Lucienne rose, still holding his sword. Her face was millimeters away from his, and he felt some of his anger give way to nervousness. Then she leaned forward so that her lips were almost touching his ear.

"You're a brave one," she murmured. "I like that." Dalet felt a shivering sensation in his stomach as her lips brushed his neck.

"I'm going to take this," she said softly, and she gently pried the bottle of antiseptic from his yielding fingers. "For my hand."

Dalet stood there, speechless, as she walked past him and disappeared in the dark hall.

End of chapter two

xxx

I would just like to say that Folken has the BEST KISSY FACE EVAR. (Go watch Operation Golden Rule of Love) It's hilarious. Especially since it contrasts so nicely with his personality.

Akugi #1

Miguel: Lord Folken! Lord Dilandau has run out of shampoo!

Folken: Oh no!

Lucienne: How does this matter to us at all?

Miguel: Well, the last time this happened, he trashed his Alseides and tossed Chesta out of a window.

Folken: He needs it if he's going to keep competing in the silky hair competition with Dalet and Allen.

Lucienne: You're not competing?

Folken: I have a mullet, if you haven't noticed.

Akugi #2 (Actually, this is more of a MST)

Mercutio: You know, if you just replaced the word "sword" with something else…

Dalet and Lucienne: NO WAY!

Mercutio: Well, love, if you're ever in the mood to have a little sparring match with me…. (smiles)

Lucienne: The last time someone smiled at me like that, Merc, we both wound up in jail.

Author's note: Please review! I've not written fanfiction in a really long time, and I really need help to get better! And I'm still not sure about which direction I want to take this, so opinions would be nice, too.