Vision Of Escaflowne Fan Fiction ❯ Bloody Hands ❯ Immortality ( Chapter 14 )

What he was thinking about was Gatti.

Van Fanel may not have been the farthest thing from his mind because so many things drifted around inside, and streaked by with stark flashes of white light and were gone. He was a walking thought-zoo, he knew that at least. Somewhere under the I-Hope-Wolf-Stays-in-the-Hotel lions and the I-Remember-the-Night-Gatti-and-I-Made-Love-and-He-Told-Me-He-Loved-Me-Fo r-the-First-Time tigers, he knew he shouldn't be thinking of Gatti or Wolf. He knew if he went into this

(insane escapade)

thing without a clear head, he could end up very hurt.

(I don't care about what happens to me anymore. That's what makes it so easy)

Wasn't it? Wasn't that what made it easy? Or was he suddenly underestimating his own caged-birdness?

Maybe I still have the strength to break out after all.

He'd read somewhere that people who committed suicide often had desperate desires to live right before they bit the big one. How anyone knew that, he didn't know, but it had haunted him. What an awful image. What perfect timing for a change of heart, they must have thought as the hard ground was rushing up at them.

Oh Sebastian, what perfect timing.

What if your feathers are still bright, boy? What if you're really a wolf?

Perfect timing, Sebastian darling. Perfect time to decide to come and save Gatti, after he's already dead. Brilliantly brave. Just fucking dashing. You were too chickenshit to join him in the army; maybe he would still be alive if you weren't so yellow-bellied. And then you decide to become the knight in shimmering armor. Afterhe's gone. And now... heh. Now you're not even sure you can do that.

That's what had streaked through his mind in a rickety carriage drawn by the Maybe-I-Can't-Really-Do-This-After-All unicorns, leaving a trail of dust behind it, when the door of the Schezar manor opened and Gatti stared at him from the inside of the mansion.

He had almost expected it.

Among the menagerie of wild-animal thoughts that had careened through him on his walk, there had been the eagles. The Gatti-is-in-the-Schezar-Mansion eagles. Crazy birds, he had at first labeled them. Crazy, crazy birds. Gatti was dead. Wasn't that why he was on this

(crazy escapade)

journey in the first place? Because Van Fanel had clipped his Gatti-wings?

No, he had thought, watching the eagles sour out of his mind, No. Gatti is inside. I can feel it.

So when the young girl with short ash-blonde Gatti-hair and aquamarine Gatti-eyes had opened the door in a green dress, Sebastian hadn't been shocked into hysterics by his reincarnated lover. Rather, an odd sort of relief had swept through him, eclipsing those caged-up-animal thoughts. Relief because it hadn't been such an insane thought after all. Because, yes, the eagles had been right. Gatti was here.

Hello Gatti your feathers were always so much brighter than mine, weren't they?

"May I help you?" the female Gatti asked uncertainly.

"I...." Sebastian managed to push the word out of his mouth, just so he'd have a word out of his mouth. So the Gatti reincarnation wouldn't think he was a wandering lunatic or something instead of her/his long lost lover. Sebastian tried to find the words he wanted. But he discovered that his mind may have been a throbbing zoo of animal-thoughts, but his mouth was a desert baking under the sun, too tired to string a sentence together. The words bubbled at the top of his head like the film of foam on a fresh glass of wine, then fizzled away.

The Reincarnation of Gatti stared, her pretty Gatti face starting to convey a hint of fear.

No, Gatti.... it's me! Sebastian thought, Don't be afraid. Meet me under the willow tree, the world has hushed for you and me, your feathers were always brighter than mine, Gatti. You did it. You did it after all. You were right. Everything did turn out all right because your feathers... they were just too fucking bright for God.

He could feel his own feathers getting brighter.

Gatti.

He could feel it quite strongly now, like the scent of his mother's homemade biscuits in the morning when he was a child.

Gatti.

That's why the memories had been so fierce lately. Because his lover was alive. Crushed, mangled, body ripped apart by a barbaric king in one of those stupid ominous machines that Sebastian hated so much that he hadn't joined the Dragonslayers, but now alive. Now alive. And his feathers were so bright that a sharp pain pulsed through Sebastian's temples.

At the same time Sebastian was romping steadily, slowly through the snow and wondering if he should have barred the hotel room door up with a chair from the outside, Wolf Urai was waking up to the Big Day. The day he would avenge his brother once and for all. The day he would finally show Van Fanel that he wasn't the great king that everyone thought he was. He was just an stupid bastard, shit-for-brains bumpkin who'd killed Mercutio.

He grimaced and smacked his lips at the foul, dry, morning-mouth film on his tongue.

"Time to go dragon slaying," he told Sebastian, sleepily, but eagerly. The words jolted him from his sleepiness. He sat up and swung his feet over the bed, hopping to the floor.

"Boy, he's gonna get it," Wolf was babbling in a hurried string of short syllables, not realizing he was wasting his breath on himself. "As Mother Gaia as my witness, that man is going to wish he'd never set eyes on the world."

Wolf grabbed his cape and paused. A nasty, horrible, no good, very bad thought crossed his mind.

"Sebastian?" he called uncertainly.

No, he wouldn't leave. He couldn't, wouldn't, couldn't ever think of going without me, Wolf thought desperately.

"Sebastian!" he snapped harshly at the room, expecting the solemn, quiet blonde to amble slowly out of the bathroom, announcing in his calm, rich voice that he'd only gone to take a piss for god's sake, and for Wolf to quiet down.

But no head of careless blonde hair came out of the bathroom. No tall, lanky, sullen face.

Wolf was alone.

He felt his anger flare up like a salted wound.

"Se-bas-tain!!!!"

He flung his own cape from the wooden table, searching for Sebastian's fur one. It wasn't there. His head snapped sharply around to the dresser where Sebastian's sword had lain all night, nestled newly sharpened in its scabbard.

Gone.

All gone.

"SEBASTIAN!!"

He ran over to the door, flung it open, and dashed wildly into the corridor.

"You stupid baka!! Se-BASTIAN!!"

"Good God, will you keep it down out there?! How is a person supposed to get any sleep in this damned place?" a deep, angry voice bellowed from behind one of the other doors.

"Master Wolf!" someone called from the bottom of the stairs.

Wolf turned his anger on the young man at the desk who was looking sternly up at him.

"Where is he?!" Wolf shrieked hysterically.

"He's just gone to do a few business errands," the innkeeper said calmly, but impatience was swelling inside of him and it was obvious even to Wolf. "He's given specific orders that you stay inside the Inn."

"He left me?! He. Left me!!!!??"

"There's no need to throw a fit, sir," the innkeeper said, annoyingly serene and gentle.

"HE LEFT ME?!?!!?"

As he watched the innkeeper's uncaring,

(He'd killed his brother and he didn't even care!)

emotionless face, another thought occurred to him, a faint blurry haze among the inferno of fury.

Sebastian... alone... walking toward the Schezar manor with only his newly sharpened sword and his sorrow.

"He can't do it without me! He's going to die!!"

Wolf tore down the stairs, bolting for the front doors. The innkeeper caught him, his youth now showing despite his serious, almost fatherly calmness, and swung him around due to the force of Wolf's momentum.

Wolf slammed balled fists down on the innkeeper's back, pounding out hard, dull thumping sounds.

"Put me DOWN!!" Wolf shrieked.

"Good heavens," the innkeeper muttered, shifting Wolf over his shoulder, "He'll only be gone a little longer. Calm down, child."

Wolf was hardly aware that he was crying, no, squalling like a baby. Perhaps last night had opened the gates. Perhaps that little corner of his mind was now pierced, and all the shameful, meek emotions were coming out all at once. Maybe, just maybe, he'd messed it all up for himself again. Thinking that he could sleep huddled in stupid ol' Sebastian's arms and not wake up thinking Sebastian was immortal.

Maybe it hadn't been the strength of Mercutio's arms that had made him seem immortal.

Maybe it had simply been because his brother's embrace had been the whole world while he was holding Wolf. Because there was a definite line between being In Mercutio's Arms and being Not in Mercutio's arms. Not Being in Mercutio's arms meant that the world had teeth and could bite Wolf with them anytime it chose, without any sort of warning. But In Mercutio's Arms meant that everything was warm and soft, and everyone was good.

And having Sebastian's arms holding him, even if those arms had been tired and weak and sad, like the rest of Sebastian's weary self, the arms had been there. And the In Mercutio's Arms and Not In Mercutio's Arms spaces had suddenly converted to In Sebastian's Arms and Not In Sebastian's Arms. The line between those spaces had showed up when Wolf had felt Sebastian's warm sweater against his face. Wolf hadn't even known the line had been there.

But it had been there all along.

"I'VE GOT TO GO WITH HIM!!!" Wolf bellowed from the pit of his stomach.

"HE'S GOING TO DIE WITHOUT ME!!"

But deep down, Wolf already believed Sebastian was immortal. The way a child (unlike himself) believed that his parents were immortal.

He believed Sebastian was immortal and it never crossed his mind, despite of what he was saying, that the next time he would see him, Sebastian would be dead.

The blonde boy was sleeping.

Van frowned down at him.

"Why did you have to let him in, Celena? A perfect stranger," he muttered.

"For Gods' sake, Van," Celena said, looking down at the tall, lanky boy with dark eyes and dark eyebrows contrasting his golden-blonde hair, "What harm could he be? And anyhow, he passed out right on the porch! What was I supposed to do, shrug my shoulders and let him lay there in the snow!?"

"You didn't have to let him in," Van said, voice gruff. "I have a bad feeling..."

Celena felt the boy's forehead with the back of her hand again.

"He hasn't got a fever," she mumbled to herself. Then she spoke up so Van could hear. "It was almost like he passed out from... from shock or something. He wasn't tired... he wasn't limping or anything. And he doesn't look sick, does he?"

"Maybe he faked it," Van offered hopefully.

Celena made an exasperated 'tut' sound with her tongue.

"Honestly, Van..."

But Sebastian hadn't been faking his faint. The reality of Gatti's reincarnation had just been too much for him, even though he was quite wrong about that.

Yes, Gatti was here. The eagles had been right, and Sebastian wasn't insane. Maybe it was the relief of knowing that the eagles were right. Maybe the relief knocked him out.

He would never know.