Day 18

The Dragon's Lullaby

(Hikaru/?)

When Hikaru had first placed Storm Aquario in the locked box in her bedside cabinet along with her launcher, she had never expected to pick it up again. The dreams were too bad. The flashbacks were too common and far too vivid. Her strength had diminished too much.

So she walked away from the one thing she had always loved, because it was just too painful to keep going. Yes, she'd been able to join Ryo Hagane up in the Director's Office, but that was no real substitute for the excitement of battle.

But then he had stormed into her life like fire after rain, and refused to leave until she'd answered his challenge. It had taken every tiny scrap of bravery that she possessed, but she had caught up her blade and launched it once more, and this time she hadn't put it straight back in its box when the battle was over. She'd stared at it as it lay still on its side, and then picked it up ready to launch again. He had laughed, a glorious, high-flying sound that was nothing like the dreams, nothing like the flashbacks, and she suddenly knew she was safe with him.

He wasn't the man she had feared.

She sat on the ledge outside the cave they were sheltering in, arms wrapped around her knees, staring out across the empty plains. Somewhere out there, Nile and Demure were hunting, walking, training. Actually, probably sleeping.

He slept too, almost peacefully, within the cave. They had walked many miles that day through terrain that a year ago she would have considered impossible, impassable. Now she scrambled down ravines behind him, walked through pitch-black caves hand-in-hand with him, climbed mountains beside him. It was easy with two of them.

Part of her wondered how he'd managed it alone before, and that same part revelled in the knowledge that he wanted her with him, he wanted her to help him and walk with him across the wilderness of the world. Of all the people he could have chosen, it was her.

He never called her Hikaru. He called her Treasure, a great and beautiful prize protected by a mighty dragon.

"I loved you the moment I saw you," he had told her, his dragon quietly curling around him. "You were so bright. I couldn't look away."

She hadn't known what to say, and so she'd left it. But she knew the truth. Just as he had, she had fallen in love with him across the beydish the first time they had battled. Or maybe the second.

She'd never believed in love-at-first-sight, but she did believe in realisation-at-second-glance. It had all been so easy in the end.

Well, easy for her.

Everyone else had been shocked when she had announced whom she was going to be travelling with. First of all, they were shocked that she was going to be travelling; leaving the office and walking tens of miles every day just to follow him. And then they'd been surprised at the identity of her companion. They had expected her to go for Kyouya – the stereotypical bad-boy, the ferocious warrior who prowled alone and refused to let anyone through his impressive barriers. They thought that she would be the one to draw alongside him and challenge him. After all, that was what she had done when they'd fought in the Survival Battle. They'd expected someone as fierce and independent as she was to look for a man who could be tamed by no other.

And yes, Kyouya was nice to look at. In another world, perhaps she could have loved him.

But she had chosen her sleeping dragon, and loved him for his intelligence, his tenacity, his pride, and the way he walked so tall through the world with his eyes like dragonfire and his hair the colour of ash and blood.

And she loved him not because of who he was or what he was, but because she chose him, just as he chose her.

The air was growing cold, so she retreated into the cave, nodding a silent greeting to his dragon-guard as she passed. He was curled up on his side, golden eyes closed against the darkness, strangely ethereal in sleep. Sometimes during nights when she couldn't sleep and sat up and watched him until her eyes closed of their own accord, she fancied she could glimpse a sort of bluish-green light glimmering around him, but decided in the end that it was a figment of her imagination.

He stirred a little as she looked down at him, some fragment of a dream pulling him closer to the surface of waking. He wouldn't wake completely, though, not unless he sensed something was wrong outside. The stars held him safe, asleep in the arms of the slow-circling skies.

She could have remained where she was in that office, life frozen in fear and unable to move on. Perhaps she could have been safe there, eternally hiding from that which had almost killed her. But in the end, whilst she wouldn't have lost anything, she wouldn't have found anything either. Love wasn't a stationary, fixed thing. It moved and flowed and grew like weeds in summer, winding its way around hearts and minds and tangling them together inextricably.

He had taught her to move, to break down the ice with dragonfire, to take a step outside and look up at the stars that watched over her once again. He taught her to launch herself and her blade into the world anew, taught her to run so that she wasn't running away from what she feared but towards the future that she wanted, taught her to fly without wings.

She loved him more than she feared the nightmares. That was all that mattered in the end.

Hikaru tugged the blankets over her shoulders and checked once more that Storm Aquario was safely tucked away in her pocket. Then she closed her eyes and fell asleep, tucked up in a cave next to the brother of the man who had almost destroyed her.

For tonight, at least, Omega Dragonis and Aquario would stand guard together over their bladers.