Fushigi Yuugi Fan Fiction ❯ In Dreams ❯ Chapter 17 ( Chapter 17 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer: I own no Fushigi Yuugi Chararcters, Places or Ideas.



Suboshi scowled up at the sky for what seemed like the fiftieth time. The storm had begun all in an instant while he had still been wasting time in the mess tent. Now he was half way back to his tent and soaked through. He wanted to go yell at Soi for cooking up such a troublesome storm, but there was no proof of her ki in the storm, something that irked him beyond compare. He had no proof, but he was sure that there was no way that the storm was a natural one. He wrapped his pilfered cloak tighter around himself and then ran for the sheltering of the next tent.

He shivered against the cold and tried to dust the water out of his hair, which, thankfully, wasn't plastered to his scalp yet. He shook his head and sighed, looking out at the other tents, he couldn't even remember where his was in this gale and it was too dark to find it. He clenched his hand into a fist and started swearing.

"Suboshi?" He heard a voice ask quietly behind him. He felt his face flush as he turned aound to Yui. He was apparently in front of her tent at the moment, seeing as she was still dry and even wrapped in an extra robe against the cold. Underneath her surprise at seeing him, there was distress tainting her face. She grabbed his left wrist with both her hands and pulled him into her tent. He looked down at her with worried eyes and when she released his hand he brought it up to her cheek, only to have her move away and begin pacing the tent in an aggitated fashion.

"Is something wrong, Lady Yui?" He asked, taking a hesitant step forward. She gave him a fleeting look before continueing with her pacing. After a moment, she finally spoke, but without looking up, or acknowledging him in any way.

"Are Nakago and Soi really lovers?" Suboshi blinked a couple of times at the question, then felt his face heat up when he rememebred exactly how he had discovered that little detail of their relationship. He coughed a few times, trying to clear his throat and trying to get words out past his embaressment. Yui had finally stopped and was now looking at him with a pleading, almost desparete look on her face. He looked away, very uncomfortable with having to tell her.

"Y-yes... They are." He risked a glance back at Yui and saw that she had turned away and was crying silently. He came up to her slowly and hesitantly wrapped his arms around her, holding her against his chest. "You don't have to cry. I'll hold you until you feel better..." He felt her lightly grab his arm, before she rested her head on them, sighing.



"So? Should we wait out the storm? Or should we just go back? I should return to Saiiro..." Amiboshi asked Jennifer while they were sitting under the meagre protection of the half dead tree. They sat near each other, hands together and fingers laced, with Jenn's head resting on Amiboshi's shoulder.She was emotionally exhausted and Amiboshi just seemed tired and slightly ill from his walk in the desert. Both were soaked, but content with where they were. There was too much going on, so they had silently decided not to even try to discuss that. It was still too new and sligthly unreal, given the suddenness of the whole thing.

The whole affair with the seishi and Ami and Mark was quickly turning into a nightmare she didn't want to face. Things were spiralling out of control and she had no clue what to do at this point. In the beginning it had been easy because she knew everthing that was supposed to happen, but now... Too much had changed for her to be able to further rely on the books for any sort of clues of what course of action to take. "We should go... Soi conjured this storm, it'll be here a while and we're already soaked anyways. Don't worry about getting back to Saiiro, we'll all be going back tomorrow... Or as many of the Seiryuu Seishi I can get..." She sighed and looked away.

Amiboshi stood up then, taking her hand with him. Jenn reluctantly stood up as well, not bothering to brush off her mud stained clothing. Jenn really didn't want to step back into relative reality, but she didn't have a choice at this point, she was under a god bound geas. And besides, however bad it was, it was nothing compared to the nightmare of going back home. Sometimes she had just given up and slept for days, but in this case, she just wanted to kick everyone's ass until things started making sense, so she figured that somehow made it better. She leaned against him a little bit as they walked through the rain. She felt him shrug against her after a while.

"Well, at very least Suboshi will come... If we can find a way to keep Tamahome from killing him... That'll be a task." He made an exhausted sound and Jenn snickered. "What's so funny?"

"I was planning on not even letting them be in the same room at the same time, but I'm sure we could come up with some more "interesting" ideas if you want?" She made a suggestive face at him and he started laughing. She gave him a small smile.

"I don't think I want to know what some of those "interesting" ideas are. You're from another world and I'm sure that opens you up to all sorts of ideas that I don't think I want my brother submitted to." He smiled at her through the rain, but under the smile was a powerful, lingering, protective aura that she knew spawned from his heavy losses in the area of family. She snickered again at how funny he looked with his hair all stuck to the sides of his head like that when he was trying to be at very least mock serious.

"Don't worry, I would leave him mostly intact. I'm sure I'll need him for something later on. Telekinesis is very useful you know." She said it in a know-it-all tone that she used when being less than serious.

"What is very useful? I've never heard whatever word that was before. Was it in your native language because I think you mentioned that you naturally speak something else." He gave her a curious look, while still walking and Jenn held back a snicker when he almost fell into an unseen hole in the ground.

"Telekinesis is the ability to move things with only the power of your mind and your will. That's the seishi power that Suboshi has. I don't know the technical terms for any of the other powers though." She grabbed him arm when she stumbled in another hole and he helped her to keep her balance while they fought against the rain and the swirling sand. "Stupid Soi. At least we know that she's planning something, elsewise why would she have had Tomo mask her ki."

"Tomo masked her ki when she summmoned this storm?" Amiboshi asked her, surprise evident in his voice.

"Don't sound too shocked, I know that they hated each other, but now they have a common enemy. I'm counting on using that token as well to convince them to come with us back to Saiiro and later to Eiyou." She twisted a piece of her hair between two fingers in thought.

"Jenn, I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about..." Amiboshi asked in a strained voice. Jenn snickered a little more.

"Don't worry about it. You're not war minded, I would have been surprised if you had known what I was going on about. Tomo and Soi both have reasons to hate Nakago, so he is their common enemy. As long as they are both against him, they are allies and will work together. I was also thinking that since the Suzaku Seishi and Konan are all fighting against Nakago that they wouldn't have a problem with joining our side, so long as they could fight against Nakago." She stopped halfway through her next step, sending a surprised Amiboshi stumbling. She gasped and clamped a hand to her mouth.

"What is it, Jenn? Is something wrong? Did something happen to one of the others?" Amiboshi questioned her, coming up and standing right in front of her in a protective manner.

"I have to get to Eiyou... And fast..." She looked up at him with fear in her eyes and a desparete need that she could tell surprised him. "I know when Kotou is going to strike..."

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Mark sighed and plopped down into Jenn's butterfly chair, finally back in his own house. Marissa had dragged him to her front door, shoved him out and then said that she needed more time to plan how she was going to test her theory and that he was just getting in her way. He leaned back and closed his eyes. It was all too much at the moment and that crazy book of Mari's wasn't helping in the least... How could it know what Jenn was doing and narrate her actions? It was beyond crazy... He rubbed his temples and opened his eyes, peering around the room, trying to find something to distract him.

He saw the two large piles of Jenn's junk and went over to dig through them. It was hardly invading her privacy if the stuff had already been vegitating in his room for who knew how long. On top of the second pile was a thick leather bound book. He picked it up and carried it over to his desk, where he sat it down, pulling overhis rolly chair. He flipped it open and a few pictures went flying across his desk. He blinked at them a few times and then glanced between the pictures and the book, which he now knew to be a photo album.

She looked around his room with shifty eyes and clutched the leather bound album to her chest, as if it were some great secret. She shut the door behind herself and walked forward cautiously, as if stil unsure of her choice of action. He watched as she grudgingly held it out to him. "C-can you keep this for me for a while? I just... Yeah, just keep it for me." He took it curiously and opened it up.

"What is it?" He asked, flipping through the first few pages full of pictures. It was a stupid question because it was obviously a photo album, but still...

"They are just some pictures of me and I-I don't want them just laying around my house right now..." She looked away nervously, clenching her hands and looking away. Mark knew that there was more to this than he could see, but... She didn't let much out and he wasn't willing to risk the precarious friendship that they had.

Sure, they were best friends, but that wasn't saying much when your whole group of friends consisted of three people, one of which was several years elder. Even with a year behind them, Jenn was stil as much of or more of a mystery to him than any other girl at school. The only difference was the amount of time that he spent with her. And all of that was spent doing superficial things... Nothing personalized, or deeply soulful... They only talked about things, not family or how they felt about the world around them. But still... He didn't want to lose what he had, because it was more than anything else he had ever gotten...

He then closed the album, keeping her secrets where they were. She looked a little relieved when he shoved it under his bed and away from prying eyes. "T-thank you, Mark." She said before turning away and practically fleeing his room...

He blinked away the memory and began shifting through the pictures. Now that she was gone he wanted to know what he had lost. Images of her life flashed before his eyes; there she was, standing desolately, waiting to be picked up from school. And another, alone again, she seemed to be looking for something. All of the pictures were the same, she was alone and looking off, staring into some void. As she grew older in the pictures, he could she her saddened expression. As the photographic years passed he saw that slowly the pain of sadness faded, but leaked into a state of resignment.

He briefly wondered who was taking all of these pictures if she was so alone... He came to a divider within the book, but once he turned the thicker page, he wished that he hadn't. She was a small child again, and the pictures seemed to be the same, except that now, dark spots were evident, large bruises on her shins and upper arms. There was a picture of her crying, a bright red mark evident on the side of her face. She seemed to be trying to cover it up, trying to hide it. His heart ached and his mind screamed out in anger at whoever had hurt her like that. She looked so hurt and meek, nothing like the girl who was powerful and smart and always in control of everything...

He came to another divider and almost didn't turn to the next page, fearing what he would see.. But he did turn the page. He swallowed hard at the sight. She was cowering on the ground, curling into herself, trying to hide from a woman that was standing over her, seeming to be yelling. In another picture he saw the same woman hit her across the face. It was like some horrible nightmare that she must have lived. He wondered how that could have been her past and yet.. She was so... He couldn't this was just so unreal.

He closed it, not wanting to see more. He shuddered, trying not to believe what was right in front of him. it couldn't possibly be real... It was just too much like those stories you hear on the news about such and such a child that commited suicide to escape their parent's abuse and they show a little of the kid's history and you think that it could never happen to you or anyone you know because their parents just aren't like that, or they are too strong to succume to it... He closed his eyes, trying to think about all that he knew of Jenn because this... This just couldn't be real.

"Well, sort of... I've always lived in this area, but I lived with my birth mother and my older brother before, I just moved in with my dad like two years ago... No, I just wanted a change is all..."

He swallowed again. A much as his family hated him and negleted him, they never... They never physically hurt him... He shuddered. How could she have lived through that? He could barely stand what he got, but if these pictures... And what she had said... He couldn't believe it. It was a miracle she wasn't crazy or dead by now. It certainly explained why she was never truly happy... He closed his eyes and felt a solitary tear fall down in sympathy as well as empathy for her.

His eyes snapped open then, focusing on a picture of the two of them right after they had first met. He saw that sadness that lingered in her face and stance, even at such a happy time. A thought struck him then, it weighed heavily on his heart and sadened him greatly, especially because of how very likely it was, given these new discoveries. What if... She really was gone, but by her own hand, not whatever nonsense the police believed about him having done something to her. What if everything had just become too much for her and she had found a release from it? What if his dreams were just wishful thinking...?

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"This chapter is dedicated to everyone who has given up on life, but decided to live on for one more day. When your light goes out it doesn't end the pain, all it does is dim the lights of others."-The Muses Tk and Zv DuVeraun