Vision Of Escaflowne Fan Fiction ❯ Bloody Hands ❯ God Grant He Lie Still ( Chapter 16 )

Van set the tip of the shovel against the snow, rested one foot on the flat, and dug into the ground with a grunt. The snow collapsed easily against the intruding shovel. Van raised the shovel sharply, and the snow it had collected whished over his shoulder and fell to the ground with a soft thump behind him.

He raised his leg again and stomped the shovel into the snow. His muscles flexing, he lifted the fresh pile of snow and slung it over his shoulder.

Van could see the brown of dirt now. He beat the silver head again with the ball of his foot and buried it into the moist soil.

"Thought.... the... Dragon hunt.... would end... tonight.... didn't you?" Van heaved between the stomping of his furious digging. He could feel his sword sinking through the inside of the Boy's body again.

"Haaai!" he struck the ground again, dirt splaying on the white blanket of cold, wet snow.

I guess I wasn't a wolf after all.

Whatever the hell that had meant, he'd been right. The boy had not been a wolf. Van smiled the smile of a child who'd just discovered a cockroach lying flat on its back, creepy little black legs flailing helplessly up at the sky. A child discovering the faintest facts of death for the very first time.

Cockroach, Van thought, and scoffed. You were a cockroach, and not a wolf. And I squashed your guts out, didn't I? He laughed out loud, not realizing it until he heard it echo through the woods. No, you weren't a wolf. I was the wolf, Boy. I was the wolf this time. I suppose the Dragon hunt didend tonight..... Have a little irony, it's good for the blood.

The Boy lying on the ground, all sprawled out, his neck cocked, long and bent in a way (Van had broken it, felt it snap in his hands, let it fall limp) that was so unnatural, his slender legs all bent up and crooked, was more like an insect than anything, Van thought. His coffee-brown eyes were glazed out in a blank unseeing stare, blood leaking over the soft, plump flesh of his bottom lip. It dripped and sank into the white snow like a carpet stain.

Not a cockroach... a butterfly, someone said softly inside of Van Fanel. He's like those butterflies you had when you were little. All dried up and placed neatly on display in a little glass frame. They were beautiful, but you hated them. You hated them because seeing them all dried up and squashed into that frame had diminished them. Put a nasty, moldy green film over their beauty. They were hideous. Tiny corpses set on display for the world. And all you could ever see was that green filmy ugliness...

Cockroach.

Van pounded the shovel again, turning away from the mangled (dried butterfly) body of the Boy.

Swinging at a faster, more steady pace now, Van let his mind wander.

He wondered what relation the Boy had had to Gatti.

Brother?

No, Gatti's file had said he was

('Reported case of suspected child abuse from the father', it had also said)

an only child.

No matter, Van thought. Gatti didn't care what relation Hitomi was to me. I don't care what relation this pixie boy is
(was, Van Fanel corrected himself)
to him.

He realized he was cold; standing in the middle of a forest in the snow, wearing nothing but a red vest and his khaki pants. His fingers, even under the thickness of his brown gloves, were aching sharply with threats of frostbite.

He hissed sharply, and his teeth clattered against each other like the sound of tiny white horse hooves. His breath floated out of his mouth in a steely, silver little cloud. He cast a quick, cautious glance toward the rest of the Schezar manor. No signs of life. Then, dropping the shovel into what he'd dug of the hole, he jumped out of the grave-to-be and squatted next to its occupant-to-be, who was waiting patiently, scarlet blood still oozing

(For fuck's sake, how much can one person bleed? Van thought absently, almost obliviously.)

over his soft pink lip. Van got his first good look at the Boy's corpse. The blood was still leaking, only a little now, and some of it was drying into a bleak maroon color on his chin. Hair still silky and careless, the collar of his brown wool sweater still hugging his slender neck (which looked longer, craned at an odd, sharp angle), one hand lying cold and lifeless next to his cheek, as if he were only sleeping. As if his bony hand weren't aware that the rest of the body was dead. Somehow he was still handsome. Van hadn't killed him, only draped over him a thin white sheet.

For a moment Van contemplated bashing one of his cheeks in with the hilt of his sword, just so he would look more dead than he was. But then decided that he had better not waste any more time. It was getting late, and Van imagined that the pitch black of the night sky would start to fade into a lighter navy-blue color soon.

Frowning unconsciously, he started to tug the Boy's brown wool sweater off, forgetting completely about the origin of the blood; the huge gash in his abdomen. The brown sweater went up to his chest, and the wound jumped out at Van through the darkness like a slap across the face. He covered his mouth and turned his head away.

No. No fucking way. I'd rather freeze to death than put this on.

Van stood up, trying not to see the squishy intestines and guts and yellowish liquid that was coming from the slash. He rolled the Boy over with the edge of his foot.

Peeking cautiously, he saw that there was something lying on the ground, next to the puddle of blood that was sinking into the carpet of snow. He bent over and lifted it up to his face.

It was a colorgraph.

Van studied it almost vaguely. Two happy laughing faces stared back up at him.

Gatti was clutching the Boy's face fiercely against his, strong hands smushing his cheeks up. The Boy's mouth was hidden in the skin of Gatti's cheek, in the process of planting a kiss, his round chestnut eyes reflecting yellow lighting. He was holding Gatti's shoulders, bones in his fingers standing out gracefully, and they were both grinning into the colorgrapher. They looked deliriously happy. Like a couple of gushing, giggling school kids. Van realized he'd only seen Gatti smiling, really smiling, in pictures. In this one his teeth were almost insolently white, his lips spread in a grin that said, quite clearly, that he was in love.

Half of Van's upper lip curled up toward his nose.

"So both of you were crooked, ne?" he said quietly. Van gripped the colorgraph in both hands and ripped it neatly in half. Gatti grinning and gushing in one hand, the Boy wide-eyed and giggling in his other hand. He dropped both pieces into the hungry, open mouth of the grave, and they fluttered

(like butterflies)

down to the dirt.

"Well now you can be crooked together forever if you want."

An old song floated into Van's mind as he said it.

Meet me...
under the willow tree
and we'll be hap-pee
Meet me...
under the willow tree
where the sunlight
touches the sea
Meet me...
and the world will hush
for you and me...

Something stiff and cold grabbed Van's ankle.

"Haaaaahhh!!!" he bellowed, and stumbled backwards hysterically. So hysterically, in fact, that he fell on his bum for the second time that night. Cold, wet snow crept through his pants and started to sting his ass.

He looked over at the Boy's body. It was still resting peacefully on its belly, arms in the same position.

I must have accidentally backed into his hand, Van reassured himself. He laughed out loud at his foolishness, and climbed to his feet again, wiping slightly at his soaked ass.

When the grave was deep enough, Van climbed out again and eyed the corpse, who was still waiting patiently.

"Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," he said, a little bemused, and the sound of his voice sounded a little weak and tired after not hearing anything but the constant swipe of the shovel for so long.

Van wiped some dirt from his forehead with the outside of his lower arm, and knelt down next to the body again. Being sure not to turn him over and expose that nauseating cut again, Van grabbed one of his arms and one of his legs and pulled him belly-down towards his anxious grave. The snow crunched and slushed under the sliding corpse.

Casting a glance over his shoulder, Van stopped dragging when he was almost at the grave's mouth, and released the Boy's limbs. He walked around to the other side of the body and nudged the Boy in his stomach, into the pit that had been waiting all night to swallow him up. Van heard him land with a dull thump.

He took one small step and stood at the very edge of the grave, peering down into it, almost just to make sure that the Boy was really there.

He was.

Lying in a twisted, tangled heap, body contorted and bent up.

Like a dried, shriveled butterfly in a frame.

Van inhaled. Maybe... maybe the Dragon hunt had finally ended. Maybe he had finally won.

The Boy stared into the wall of soil. His mouth, mercifully, had stopped bleeding and the blood was now dried and smeared all over his face.

For the first time in his life, Van Fanel felt a twinge of guilt for his triumph.

He was no longer fighting on the good side of a Great War. He was no longer the brave samurai of Fanelia, protecting what he had left of an demolished kingdom. He wasn't a white dragon and he wasn't a knight. The war was over and he had won. Dilandau was gone. The Dragonslayers were gone. Folken was gone. Even Hitomi was gone. The adventure was over. And what he had just done was not an act of radiant bravery.

What he had done was murder.

Van Fanel was about to say a small prayer for him, and realized that he didn't even know the Boy's name. Somehow that had never seemed important. His was an Enemy. That had been enough. It had always, for as long as Van could remember, been enough.

Fight first and think later. Wasn't that always the way of Van Fanel's sword? Hadn't that been the method he'd killed the Dragonslayers with? That naked, stark method? Released for the very first time on that group of cowards. Maybe it had been a mistake to release it. Maybe... now that it was released... it would never go back in its cell...

Something big, hot, heavy and thick was squeezing Van's chest. The suffocating blanket of regret. It was crushing his ribcage, stinging his chest with dull ache, and his whole body was suddenly very hot despite the warnings of frostbite in his stiff fingers.

Oh God... what if he wasn't who I thought he was? What if he was just a poor, skinny boy looking for shelter from the snow outside? What if all he wanted was a place to stay for a while? What if he has a starving family back home that's waiting for him to come back with food? What if he hadn't said 'Gatti'? What if I just imagined it? It is likely... the state they've put me in. Oh god... oh my God... what if he hadn't said 'Gatti'? What if the boy in that colorgraph was just someone who looked like Gatti?

'i guess i wasn't a wolf after all...'

Meet me...
under the willow tree
where the sunlight
touches the sea
Meet me...
and the world will hush
for you and me...

Van's top row of teeth sank into his bottom lip.

"May the Gods grant that he sleep well," Van whispered, and reached for the shovel again. The sky was glowing with a faint haze of morning periwinkle on the horizon. Gaia was waking; starting to flutter her eyelashes.

Van's time was almost up.