Author's Notes: Meine Lieblings—willkommen züruck zu meinem geschicte! That means, quite plainly: My loved-ones, welcome back to my story! As you can see, I'm in such a German mood. I just got back from Germany, where I wrote this chapter. Anyways, some notes: The entire story is written to Garfakcy. Unless further noticed, Garfakcy is the not-so-mysterious "you." That's about it... Enjoy and review please!
Disclaimer: If I owned them: Bierrez would give up on Cesia, Gil would be married to Raam, Delte would be evil (and in-league with Kharl—don't ask, it's an inside joke..), every Friday Garfakcy would wear a pink dress, Rath would like Kharl on principal, Right Bird would be a girl, Shyrendora would have a secret love for Ruwalk (don't ask about that one either). I'm crazy, and I obviously don't own them.
Background Music: Field of Innocence (Evanescence)
By Sarehptar
Chapter Three-
My Little Secret
I've lost track of their comings and goings. I've lost track of the deaths in their beloved castle, though I myself held the hand of one dead Dragon. They say it is wiser to know one's enemies then to know one's self, but see where that has gotten me—too disgraceful to be youkai, too impure to be anything else.
I have heard humans say that before they die, their lives flash before their eyes. It is the same for youkai, I now see, but the memories come not as swift and painless flashes, but as agonizingly slow and venomous visions, visions that seem to make the time between first pain and death an eternity. As if an immortal life in the bowels of Hell is not enough torture, the memories return with twice the agony and emotion as when they were truly new. I suppose that is the price for one who has lived his life drenched in blood, regardless of the circumstances of his death... I don't imagine you can hear this, or would understand if you could, but this pain has finally cleared my mind of hatred and misconception. For the first time in hundreds of years, I really, truly understand everything—about me, about them, about him, and about you.
What I have always loved most in you (and despised most) was your unending admiration. Despite my faults, my failures (masked so well), you maintained that unshakable faith of yours. I should never have been surprised at this. After all, you were becoming exactly what I had been: a child so eager to learn... to be loved. And I was becoming—I became something so different.
That day, the day I found you, was the day of my death. No, not the true death I am falling into now, but the death of the person I was—the death of who I had been up until then. You were lying so calmly in my arms, slipping in and out of consciousness. I was puzzled by your dull acceptance of the situation, and your willingness to sleep unaware of who you were with, or what might be done. In truth, I don't think it was acceptance that drove you into slumber. There was simply no fight left in your little body. So I sat in the forest, half between a human village and the castle of my demonic master, midnight shapes of the birds framing my shoulders like sable wings, and the crimson form of a child in my lap... What a picture I made!
There amid the black barked trees, I was watching your life drain away like scarlet tide, watching you shiver with each harshly drawn breath. You had lost too much blood, born too much pain I thought. I worried, with the cold, the freshly flowing cuts, the ragged sound of liquid in your lungs, you wouldn't live much longer on your own. Why... Why did that bother me? Why had I done any of that, that rescue? What purpose had it served? A test of my Death Seed I tried to convince myself. But then why? What had possessed me to carry you away from them as if I owned you? At that moment, I couldn't understand why I had done something so impeccably... stupid.
Years later, after having learned so much from you, I understand that day to be a breath of compassion. Even now, the word seems strange when linked to me. Compassion... It was what brought me to you, and also what has landed me here—in a crumpled heap on the floor of a tower I once desired to rule. But, it is hardly in vain, my agony. You're alive, he is alive (something that has been so hard to guarantee other the years), and both of you are in Dragon hands. I don't know whether to count that fact as a blessing or a curse. I don't believe they will harm you, but you did mark them as enemies. I wish my fading mind would let me think of your present, your future, but it keeps dragging me back, to my past... Our past.
What was I to do with you? The question repeated rather unhelpfully in my mind as you slept limply in my hold. Leaving you to die would have been easiest, or easier (on the mind) would have been to end your life myself. But I couldn't imagine simply leaving you alone here. I almost saw your weary, bloody emerald eyes filling with contempt and hatred once more as you glared at my disappearing form. The vision was bitterly realistic, and I found myself hoping never to become the object of such hatred. Worse even then leaving you was the thought of combating your fiery spirit with the quick and quiet Death Seed. I hardly knew you, but I already knew it didn't you suit to die that manner. But the only other way I could be rid of you was to take your life with my own hands... Instantly, the thought of your already mutilated flesh being rent by my claws brought on a horrible wave of nausea that had made me convulse around your form unwillingly. No, I couldn't kill you. I couldn't abandon you. You were too much like me. It was too easy to dye your emerald eyes pale blue; to make your pain clenched face into my own. You were too full of life to die.
But... What choice did that leave me? If I took you back to the humans' village, I had no doubt they would have found some way to blame you for the death of their comrades, and would have enjoyed ending your fast fading life. But... To return with you to the Master's castle was impossible. Death, or worse, torture would await you there, regardless of anything I might say to the Master. I couldn't fathom disobeying him, or standing against his wishes in anyway, and he would have wanted to have fun. How could I have faced him with you in my arms and still have expected him to love me—me, the demon he had trained to view all humans as things to toy with, to regard as less than insects...
If only there was someway he didn't have to know! If only... I could... hide you. I could keep you safe from him. Like... a secret. The idea took hold in my mind instantly, as the idea of keeping something hidden does in all children's minds. Quite rapidly, you became an entrancing secret to hide from my Master. Not to disobey, for I loved him dearly, but to keep you safe, and to feel the thrill of keeping my first REAL secret! A living, breathing object to hide, one that I knew nothing about... There was another entertaining thought: What would my secret be like when he awoke? What would you live like, talk like? That was unknown to me, and just as difficult alchemy problems could absorb my entire mind, I was quickly becoming determined to know everything about you, to unravel all the secrets inside the secret I would keep. Really, I began to see your rescue as something of an opportunity, an opportunity to study something I never had before. I had mastered alchemy, excelled in magic. I had learned all there was to blood and death. But I never thought to study life.
With a new passion I gathered you gently, like something breakable by the slightest touch, and strode in a brisk little pace toward the Master's castle. I could easily climb back into my window, even with you in my hold, and find some place to tuck you away while I found bandages for your wounds and figured out how to mask your scent. This is what I intended to do, but, as often occurs, my plan was ruined. Damned, because the first thing that hit me as I came in view of the castle was the heavy and familiar scent of blood. Human blood, and to my horror, demon blood. All thoughts of secrecy and sneaking were driven out of my mind by a chorus of raucous human laughter. Shifting your limp form in my arms, I threw open the main door as if it was a feather, not solid wood and metal.
I have always remembered the scene that lay beyond those doors. For the first time, my blood ran cold at the sight of humans. The room was a sea of crimson, demon and human bloods pooling to become one great tarn of scarlet… And in the center, impaled by a gleaming gold sword, was the man I adored, learned from, killed for.
"MASTER!" It was my last act as a child, that pitiful cry. Even though these are only visions, memories of past events, I can still feel the flame of hatred I felt that day, and it burns again just as brightly. I looked into the eyes of the man standing over my Master, and I had felt for first time that fabled desire—the desire to hunt, to trap, to torture, to kill slowly and agonizingly. I set you down gently, so calmly, actions not reflecting the flame, the thrill of murder burning inside. My heart beat so loudly in my ears that it drowned out the sounds of many human voices, cursing or shouting what they would. The moments after this gentle release of you come to my failing body only as flashes of dying men, piercing screams and streams of blood that rent the air like vermilion raindrops. What does come to me clearly now is him, the Arinain King. The man so loathed by my Master, the man I was taught to hate, as all demons were. That was a lesson I hardly needed to learn. Deeper than anything I had ever felt before, a blood-thirsty hatred was coursing through my veins, consuming my rational mind and bending my body to its will.
And more than all else, it wanted to see that man dead. I should have realized, at the time, I had little chance of defeating a person so skilled in the destruction of demons, a master of the sword, and the crafter, as I later learned, of Diolasis, Lakiayta, and Salbacion—the three treasures. As I drove back his magic, his sword, and even his fists, I knew I could not win. But to die in this battle would mean his victory, his escape. If I could not win, I would not let him walk away unscathed from the murder of my Master. I summoned a spell from the depths of my knowledge, gleaned from an archaic magical tome, and separated the Arinain King from the power that made up much of his strength: The life-spirit of Arinas.
This effort and the effort it took to keep that power in my hold left me defenseless—drained and weary. I might have died at his hands that night, but he was weakened enough by the loss of the spirit to reluctantly flee. It is no safe place to be within a demonic castle, not knowing how many other youkai might reside there, and being worn to near fainting by the loss of something that might greatly affect one's country. I could barely lock the Arinain essence within myself, and I knew I couldn't allow it to remain there for long—its pure light was corrosive to the dark demon soul.
Almost unable to keep conscious, I dragged myself to you, the only other living being in midst of a blood-bath. That should have been a sign to me. My first thought after the battle was not the fallen Master I loved so much, my first thought was not to bury or rid the hall of the dead—it was to remove you from the room. Not to keep you from seeing the carnage, I could not have cared less about that. No, it was not to keep you from seeing the mess. It was to keep your slowly clotting blood from mixing with the blood of my victims. I would not -could not- even in the violent mindset I was in, allow you to appear a victim of my cruelty, or let your flesh be painted with the blood of my enemies...
No... I would never let you be marked as such, my little secret.
Author's Notes: Okay, whattcha think? Weird, right? But now Kharl gets to be normal, and not so cute and innocent like he was in the first two chapters. I wrote this one on the plane to Germany, and typed it on my host family's computer. I hope you liked it. If it's confusing, keep in mind that he's dying.. If his thought pattern was perfect, he wouldn't realistically be dying right? Anyways, book 14 is cute, huh? But I DON'T like how they made him cuss! KHARL DOESN'T CUSS! In the Japanese version of the sandwich scene, he doesn't cuss. Stupid Tokyopop.. Hey, guess what! Kharl fans rejoice.. I'm such a fangirl, I named the new kitten I just got, Kharl. He's a cute lil' Siamese, but he is evil! He slunk into my room last night, climbed up onto to my head and started knitting on my face. He even kinda looks like Kharl- Pale blue eyes, puffy white (Kharl's is lilac-white) hair... He's adorable, and friendly to our dog, which get this, everyone in my family calls "Garfakcy." So we have a cat named Kharl who loves the dog named Garfakcy.. (Okay, the dog's real name is Dude, but everyone I know calls him Garfakcy cause he's such a naughty puppy.) Oh well.. Anyways, review, please!
Review Responses:
Kawaii Ningen Kitsune: Thanks so much for the compliment. I think I emailed you about the picture, but if I didn't, you have to pay for it.. T.T Anyways, review again and stay kawaii!
Aquajogger: I just got back from Germany! whoop It was fun! Are you still there? Where are you now? Anyways, thanks for the wonderful compliments, I love 'em!
snakespirit: Sadly yes, this story is bound to be confusing and lack dialouge.. It's a thought fic, so there will be little-to-no dialouge.. Oh wait.. They maybe some, but it's all in his memories... And it's bound to be confusing because of the tense I wrote it in (Present and Past Perfect) and the fact that he's dying and his thoughts are all over the place. Anyways, thanks for the compliments, and write some new stories soon okay?
Rurouni Chaos: First of all, your story is NOOOOT crappy, I loved it! I love, love, love the Viarres/Cesia pairing- It's so tragically beautiful! Rath is okay too.. About the glitch.. You're right. I meant to write last chapter that the entire story is written TO Garfakcy... Until the very last chapter. Which I will NOT tell you anything about. Okay, don't I feel like such an AWESOME Gar-chan fangirl: In book four, in three panels, Garfakcy has a glaive made from ash. In the first panel you can't really see it (he's summoning it).. In the next it's being de-summoned, so it's sheer, and in the third panel, Cesia's wind power destroys it, and you only see the broken form dissolving. But I feel so good about my Garfakcy knowledge now- Wee! Anyways, thanks for the cool compliments, and write more to I can read it and review it!
Zarame: Thanks for the compliments! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!