Twisted Fortune - An Escaflowne Fanfiction
By Bonnejeanne and Nixers
Contact: bonnejeanne@yahoo.com and nixerchan@aol.com
Warnings: Spoilers,
Notes: Set a little over one year after Vision of Escaflowne's end.
Chapter Nine - Overnight (cont)
Part 19
The trip back to the estate was in short order and carried out in that same silence, even though there was no escort along side them. In some way it seemed that every move they made in the city, they were less obviously watched.
Still, no one thought to break the persistent rumble of the vehicle's passage, its tone reminded Dilandau far too much of the concealing hum that had been the background to at least half of their conversation not minutes before. It evoked, however, no facsimile of privacy.
It was not until waving off the guards in the half opulent hallways of the manor that the first attempts at conversation began. Dilandau had, after Jajuka had closed the doors, sat down on one of the expensive looking chair afforded by the room.
"Jajuka," Dilandau said, as if catching the beastman's attention. "You are to deliver a message south," Dilandau paused, looking unhappy at the situation. "The situation is delicate and there is no one else trustworthy."
The beastman tilted his head slightly but nodded in acceptance. He waited for the details of the mission, watching Dilandau with focused attention.
Dilandau took a moment to focus his thoughts. He'd always had Folken to set the parameters for him to work within. "We'll need to acquire some equipment, possibly even one of the scout suits. After that, you are to deliver a message directly into the hands of those Van specifies. He'll give you a letter or some such to verify your authenticity and assure your safety." At that he glanced at the king for confirmation.
Van turned to the beastman. He looked directly into the single dark eye. "You should take full caution. No Fanelian will harm you, but by this time it is likely that Allen Schezar and his crew are in Fanelia, and I have no idea how they will have reacted to my... our disappearance or any other events. You must speak to Dryden Fassa, ask for him, he should be acting as Regent. Speak to no one else. If Dryden wishes to include Allen Schezar, I will trust his judgment, but no one else. I will write a letter for you to deliver to his hands, and a second one, for my little sister, Merle. If he asks questions, answer them as best you can, at your own discretion."
Jajuka listened and committed the instructions to memory. He'd spent some time in concealment in Fanelia, before his mission to retrieve "64", and had a clear enough idea what he was being asked to do.
"We'll be taking a long range communicator, so if necessary, you can get in contact with us if it is vital," Dilandau added. It was not particularly the instructions he wanted to give, but it would do. He put on hand on his hip, finished with his instructions, and glanced at Van, quickly.
Van had been looking around the room, and had noticed what looked like a writing desk. He went to it and was able to figure out how to open the desk cover, and found writing materials.
Sitting down, he wrote quickly, signed the paper and then wrote another. He looked around and found a stick of sealing wax and folded and sealed both messages, using the crest on the hilt of his sword to make the imprint. That and his signature inside would verify that the notes were authentic. He mulled over the notes for a moment, trying to think of something else that would assure those who would receive the letters that this was no Zaibach trick. Placing the notes on the desk, he crossed out of the room and went into the suite where they had changed and bathed earlier, closing the door. A few moments later he came back, his tunic half-fastened, and holding in his hand three white feathers.
He used the wax to seal a feather to each letter and then, when the wax was cooled, placed them slowly into Jajuka's hands.
"Dryden Fassa is a tall man with dark hair, and usually has a pair of glasses perched on his nose. If you have any doubt, ask him what book described the journey that we followed together. The answer is the journal of Allen Schezar's father," Van told the beastman. He touched the second letter. "This is for my little sister Merle. She has gold fur, red-orange hair, and wide gold eyes. Tell her that the trinket she stole from Hitomi is safe and so am I."
Jajuka covered his surprised when the young king described his sister as a beastperson, and simply nodded. "I understand," he said.
Dilandau glanced between the two. He'd also caught the fur of Van's sister, but he'd somehow failed to be surprised. "Report back as the situation allows," Dilandau said not quite a command. "We'll notify you when everything is prepared."
Jajuka nodded, formally. "You are going on a mission," he stated.
Dilandau nodded. "With luck, it will be shorter than my last one," he said dryly.
Jajuka glanced from Dilandau to the young king with concealed amusement, of which the barest edge could be seen by Dilandau and no one else.
The beastman bowed. "If you will make a list of what you require, I'll see to that. There should be a meal in the kitchen - I had it delivered while we were out. Let me bring it out to you while you consider what you need procured."
"It should be ready by then," he said frowning slightly. /If we part company../ He shook off the impulse to ask, deciding that it wasn't a true parting of ways. He nodded, giving the beastman his leave.
Jajuka bowed and moved out of the room into another part of the house, stowing the messages away carefully. Van found a seat on a wide couch and threw himself down, resting one hand lightly over his eyes.
The other boy took the place at the writing desk, glaring at the blank sheet for a moment. With a sigh of irritation when no ideas come to him, he glanced over at Van, "I don't suppose you've ever been to our destination?"
Van opened his eyes and shook his head. "You know where I've been... you chased me through most of it."
Dilandau snorted, a smirk quirking his lips. "I've not been on any assignments that couldn't be solved by a well placed guymelef or two." he scowled, crumpling the sheet he'd halfheartedly begun to write on. He shrugged.
"Does that mean you're planning to burn down half of Basram?" Van asked in a tone that implied it was rhetorical.
The albino paused, a wistful look on his face as he considered it. "It's an idea, but there's no assurances we'd get the target..."
Van shook his head slightly and placed his hand back over his eyes.
Dilandau glanced at Van again, and turned back to the desk. Transportation was a given, Basram, at best was a two-day journey, but after that... Their orders and information were sketchy. No worse than that, they were moving on what amounted to little more than rumors left behind of the target.
Van looked over at the sound of tearing paper. He studied the albino for a moment. "What's wrong?"
Dilandau half turned in his chair, propping an elbow on the back of it. "We've got less than nothing to go on. We're going to be walking in blind. Short of bringing the entire armory with us, it's impossible to prepare for," he said, punctuating the last sentence with a frustrated growl.
"If we get there I can find him."
Dilandau raised an eyebrow. "That will help," he admitted. After a moment's consideration he regarded the other boy, "What are you planning?"
Van tilted his head. "Planning?"
"Never mind," he said sourly. "It seems we'll need to get close to the target anyway. Adelphos wouldn't have sent for me for just a simple assassination. We need to know how much of the product..." he said, disliking the circular talk, but the walls were too thin for his comfort, and Adelphos had been fairly clear on that. "Has been made, and where they keep it. Letting it remain would be in neither of our interests..."
This was the thought that had been haunting Van. With reluctance bordering on dread, he said softly. "I will need Escaflowne."
Dilandau stiffened at that, memories playing behind lidded eyes. "Why?" he snapped, displeasure obvious in his tone.
Van was viewing memories of his own. "Because I'll need it, to fight. And in case... in case something happens to me. I want it to happen to Escaflowne as well. I'm the last of my blood. I don't know what will happen if I die... I can't leave it in Fanelia. I have to protect them from..." his words stopped just short of completing the thought.
Dilandau had only half understood the Fanelian king's reasons. He was beginning to grasp a bit of it from some fevered admissions in the days earlier, but it was still a hazy concept. Instead of asking, he turned to something he could understand easily. "You'll implicate Fanelia, unless in the past year Escaflowne's gotten a stealth manteaux..." Dilandau glanced at Van a little wildly, hoping things hadn't changed that much.
Van accepted the words, considering them. "No... I have no way to conceal what it is." He closed his eyes, trying to work out the problem. "I don't know yet," he said finally.
The other boy shrugged, having no answers himself. "You could try some of that diplomatic crap as a decoy. Not sure how well it would hold though."
After a moment, Van looked at the other boy. "Perhaps you could use me as bait..."
Dilandau looked Van up and down doubtfully for a moment, before the recollection of their meeting with Adelphos cut off the scathing remark. "It's possible, with Escaflowne there as well..." He smirked, "A sign of good intentions and future relations with Zaibach?"
Van rested his chin on his hand. "Or a bargaining chip for a former officer fleeing Zaibach and 'readjustment'..."
"It would depend on how much influence the target has," Dilandau shrugged, "If he's calling the shots there..."
"Considering what he has control over it's hard to imagine he's not calling the shots," Van said, and this remark, along with the previous one, almost gave the itchy impression of someone else speaking. It reminded Dilandau of Folken.
"Then that is out," Dilandau said, leaning back against the desk, regarding Van through his bangs. "Not everyone has the opinion of you being so fine of a prize."
"Not me," Van said. "Folken's brother. His rival's brother. And a... a draconian. Would he be so different from the other Zaibach wizards?"
"I can't imagine," Dilandau said, his hand twitching towards his sword belt unconsciously. "One of them is fairly much like the rest. Never could tell the bastards apart." He shook his head, "So we play on his desire for revenge? It sounds like that desire is healthy enough for it to work," he smirked, "It worked with you well enough anyway."
Van looked up and met the other boy's garnet eyes. "Yes it did," he said softly.
Dilandau met the gaze, a distinct feeling of the world having turned upside down again while he wasn't looking again. "But that changed somehow," he said, watching the other in turn.
"Yes, a lot of things changed," Van answered. "For a while I thought everything had changed." He closed his eyes, and then opened them and looked away. "And Escaflowne is not here. Yet."
He stared at Van for a moment before swiping a pen off of the desk to fiddle with it absently. "For a stupid antique it has you quite worked up."
"It had you worked up a moment ago," Van observed. "For a stupid antique, you seem almost afraid of it."
Dilandau frowned slightly, his hand stilling. "If I remember, it was you who recently implied that I should be."
"Yes... perhaps you should. Perhaps they should have let it, and me die when you almost did the job before."
"Of all that's happened, it has made you suicidal. I think that's the change I can't get used to the most," Dilandau said, flatly. "As hard as I try, I can't remember any of this from across the battle field."
Van got up and walked over to a window, looking out without seeing anything in front of him.
"I'm not suicidal," he said with low voiced intensity. "I want to live." The four words almost throbbed with suppressed emotion. "I have... reasons... I didn't have before. But I have something else I can't ignore. The things I did... the things I learned how to do, the things it.. she... it let me do, made me do... I was trained to protect... not to kill and kill until nothing else has any meaning..." the last few words dropped to a near whispered and Van forced his mouth to close over them. He waited for the inevitable derision, the smirk or sneer or whatever was coming with as close as his could manage to stoic acceptance.
Silence stretched out as the other boy sat, his head down and brows drawn together. A hundred thoughts offered themselves to be voiced, but none of them felt right in the face of Van's expression and hunched posture. He'd never had a need for conversational skills, the most he'd ever truly exercised was in irritating Folken to test his bounds.
"So what changed?" Dilandau asked finally, slowly. "There's some new reason, or a purpose." He frowned, struggling slightly with the words. "For all that .. it... made you do, *you* at least figured out how to stop," he said, a little vehemently, and eyes still fixed on the pen in his hands instead of meeting the gaze of the other boy.
Van looked up, surprised by the words. He watched Dilandau for a moment. "I'm not sure I did," he answered simply. "Someone stopped me... before I could kill you. Allen Schezar. And then we fought. For no reason... or maybe there was, I don't remember... it was a beautiful battle. If you like such things you would have loved it. You've never seen such a battle. But I didn't stop... I couldn't stop... she stopped me. She... stopped me. Hitomi." He continued to look at the albino, not seeing him for a few moments, seeing another face, and then even that one faded, leaving him blinking. "I... maybe I'm afraid that nothing *has* changed."
Dilandau had sat through the narration, struggling to imagine what he couldn't bring himself to remember. The Hitomi... most likely the meddling woman who kept getting in the way, though he couldn't understand why Allen would bother to keep Van from killing him, and why he didn't feel overly shocked at the thought.
"And here," he said quietly, "I've been afraid that there isn't a single thing that is the same. I've yet to...." he stopped, biting off the words, confusion mixed with frustration on his face. "I'd ask you why you were coming with me on my mission, but you'll just hide behind the fact that Fanelia's at risk too. So, I'll try something different, why was I your 'guest'? Excuse me if it's hard to believe under any circumstances that I would be welcome in Fanelia normally."
Van looked at Dilandau and found he was reluctant to answer the question, now that it had finally been posed. He threw himself back onto the couch. "They *were* very strange circumstances," he admitted, trying to think of what to say.
"I can imagine. I'm actually surprised to find myself alive, after hearing where I'd been while.... gone," Dilandau said, struggling for the last word.
Van took a breath, finding that the answers were not coming to him. "You... weren't in Fanelia the whole time," he said, finally. "Very little of it, only the last few days. The rest of the time you were in Asturia. With Allen."
Dilandau seemed to struggle with assimilating that. "Allen Schezar..." he said, "He seems to have been mentioned today a lot regarding me." he laughed, "I even dreamed about him last night. And he wasn't even the one I *wanted* to fight all those times..." Dilandau shook his head. "I can assume the reason he would be in Fanelia now is because of me?"
Van nodded. The absurdity of it caused the corner of his mouth to twitch. "Yes. He... preferred you to stay in Pallas."
Dilandau's eyes narrowed a bit at that, before his lips twisted into something of a smile. "The only good thing I remember about Pallas is that it caught fire marvelously quickly." He crossed his arms, suddenly glancing at Van. "You don't want to tell me why, do you." he stated.
Van looked up. "I did," he said quietly. He chuckled softly to himself, but it wasn't an amused sound. "I wanted to tell you everything. I wanted to walk you through my country and show you every building, home, shop, stable, granary that you burned. I wanted to take you to each grave that was dug with the hands of children or wives or mothers... I wanted to show you all these things and ask why... why did you do this to my country..." His shoulders slumped a little. "But you didn't remember doing it. And in the end I couldn't tell you." He laughed suddenly. "And I thought it would be easier to tell you now... but it's not."
Dilandau stared at Van, he understood that first motive of some satisfaction through revenge. "Even with my memory, you've had the chance to get any revenge you could have wanted. As much as I despise admitting it, you're better with the sword now..."
"I didn't want revenge," Van said softly. "I wanted you to *know*. I wanted to look in your eyes, standing by a burnt-out farm that no one had survived to rebuild, and see that you knew, and make you tell me why... I understood when you came after me... I didn't know everything I knew later, but I was king, if only for a day or two, and it was my place. But why take the lives of those who could never do you any harm?"
Dilandau tilted his head, frowning just barely on the edge of a scowl. "It was strategically sound, during the attack, most of the civilians fled." Dilandau shrugged. "It was after you... disappeared that it had to be done, there could be no place for you to go back into hiding. If I had desired a massacre, I would have ordered the mountains razed as well."
Van watched the young man's face as he spoke. He let the silence fill the room for a moment before speaking again. "So you only killed a hundred when you could have killed thousands. Or was it two hundred? Of course there were those who died during the winter because we had no shelters built in time... and those who starved because the fields could not be worked... and those who died from despair because their children or husbands were taken... Make it three hundred... yes, an even three. Would you like a letter of gratitude from the remaining thousand you spared? Perhaps you might persuade your general to send a similar letter to Basram, since their act was also strategically sound..."
Dilandau had watched with flat eyes, and when Van had paused simply said. "I'm not allowed regret."
Van nodded. "You're lucky then," he said.
Dilandau laughed at that, a distinctly unbalanced look suddenly evident. "I wouldn't say that." he grinned, "The best eulogy I could manage even for my Dragonslayers was to say what a waste their deaths were, and even that...." he paused, a snarl replacing the out of place grin. "I don't remember after that."
"They saved you," Van said softly. He didn't know why he was saying it.
The albino had no response for that. He just sank back into the chair further, feeling numb and staring at the floor. "If I could have," he said quietly, "I would have done the same for them."
Van closed his eyes, hearing the truth and accepting it. "If I'd known what would happen, I'd have found a way to stay, and die or be captured if it would have saved my country. I didn't run. The blue light came..."
Dilandau nodded, almost absently, "Gatti had said as much. It doesn't seem so strange these days as it did then."
The silence stretched out between the two, broken at last by the sound of Jajuka, pushing a wheeled table into the room, bearing covered dishes and cups as well as water and a stronger drink.
Noting the silence, he glanced from one to the other without comment. Removing something from under one of the dishes, he placed a packet on the writing desk where Dilandau sat.
"I'm sorry to take so long with this, Captain," he said quietly. "Something was sent in with the food. A confidential package from the General."
Dilandau nodded, having straightened in his chair the second the door had opened. "It's excusable," he said glancing at the packet with renewed curiosity. "Though the list of materials essential to the mission may be delayed until morning."
Van's eyes flickered - it meant the message would be delayed as well - but he said nothing.
"Yes, Captain," Jajuka replied. "I will be in the back of the house if you need me. The house has an intercom system," he mentioned, nodding to a small grate and buttons on the wall.
Dilandau nodded again, glancing briefly at the small device. "Secured?" he asked. He disliked being circumspect when a simple, blunt statement could do the same job, but if the lines had any chance of being compromised...
Jajuka nodded. "This residence was cleared by the General prior to your coming here."
Dilandau nodded to the beastman, feeling unexpectedly weary after the previous conversation. "Thank you, Jajuka," he said, without much thought behind it. "If there is nothing else?"
Van glanced up suddenly, remembering something from the battle, now that the recollections of that time were stirred. Words heard... the beastman's voice... he'd heard it before. 'It's all right to be Serena now...' He turned and looked into the golden-furred one's single clear eye.
"If you want to know the rest," he said to Dilandau, still looking at Jajuka, "He can tell you more than I."
Dilandau blinked. The conversation had so quickly turned from its original course that it took a moment for the white haired boy to connect what Van was talking about. Red eyes focused quizzically on Jajuka. "Is this true?" Dilandau asked, searching the beastman's face.
Jajuka's expression flickered from the normally calm, well-schooled one, to a combination of brief anger directed at Van, and a devoted compassion for Dilandau that he worked to keep concealed. He didn't answer, knowing the boy would read it easily enough in his face.
Dilandau found his answer and looked away. "Maybe you were right," Dilandau said, addressing Van without looking in the other boy's direction. "Maybe things haven't changed, I just didn't know what they really were." He once again glanced up at Jajuka. "I know at least that I can trust you for a straight answer. I know that I've been in Asturia for the past year, I'm just trying to find out why."
Jajuka's face twisted slightly with a touch of fear and concern. He went down gracefully to one knee, bowing his head slightly. "If you command me, I'll answer," he said, his melodious voice strained with emotion. "But you aren't ready yet, Captain."
The Captain seemed to forcibly wear a calmer expression. The hesitancy of the other two in the room shook his resolve, but he refused to show it. A bit of a wry grin crossed his face as he voiced a stray thought, "And what mile marker do we judge ready by?"
Dilandau shook his head, taking the package and standing up. He hadn't expected an answer to that. Without any further comment he walked toward the door and opened it, intent on finding another room for the night. Dinner suddenly didn't hold much appeal.
Van watched him, shaken to his core by the same conversation. He turned at looked at the beastman who stood, resuming the regal posture that was his by nature. Jajuka returned the look directly.
"What ties you to my charge?" the beastman asked in a low voice.
Van glanced again, almost unwillingly after the departed figure.
"Need," he said simply, and added in a soft, tormented voice, "...and love."
THE END OF PART 19!