Title: Uncomfortable Situations [Part One]
Series: Vision of Escaflowne
Rating: PG-13 for some violence.
A/N: Part 1, I decided not to do any prologue for this one, since the epilogue for Amoro Revidi seemed to do that quite nicely. I have been working on this since the other story ended, and I'm plowing through to it, now that the name issue is solved, I'll be posting them much swifter. As always, comments are appreciated.

***

    “First Asturia, now Fanelia,” Eries says quietly, lowering the letter sent out from Fanelia Castle after the attack and subsequent disappearance of the patriarch of the country.

    “How horrible for Hitomi,” Allen murmurs. Eries glances up at him from her desk, and sees a blank, far off expression in the Senior Knight Caeli’s eyes.

    “Allen,” she says, lightly, in a soft voice, hoping to hide the little twinge of jealousy she feels at the look on his face in relation to the woman’s name he had just spoken. “Would you send Celena in to me, please?”

    “Celena?” he asks, a little disturbed by the idea of the acting queen calling for his sister. From what he has noticed, she hasn’t been comfortable with the young woman since her return with him from the battlefield, nearly seven years ago now. When he had mentioned that she lifted a sword to the princess, he could’ve sworn she had gone nearly immediately from subtle distrust to outright disapproval of the quiet girl.

    “Yes, Celena,” Eries replies, turning her attention back down at her papers without further comment, a little too quickly for his liking. He had missed whatever expression had passed over her face, and is a little unsettled by the idea of something going through her mind to make her call for Celena. Allen steps out to go and retrieve his younger sister, passing Dryden in the doorway on his way out. Eries sets down her papers and looks up, “Yes, Dryden?”

    “What news?” he asks, casually. Though their ages are roughly the same, she appears, as always before when the rich merchant heir was courting the younger princess, the older of the pair of them. His concern over matters of state, during that point in time, had been lackadaisical at best, and whenever asking about the state of the country, he had been very careless with his words, as now.

    “Van’s disappeared, sends the Prime Minister of Fanelia, just after the wedding… and Hitomi’s coronation.” Eries, as always, relates the information to Dryden in a frank tone with hints of patronizing in the back of her throat. Though supportive of Dryden’s marriage to her sister, she had never been quite sure of his position as king, before the pair had married and Millerna’s organized and regal manner had rubbed off on him. Now, with her missing, Eries feels that Dryden has regressed to his own pre-Millerna attitude, and thus, so has she to the one of the time before the wedding and her own seclusion.

    Dryden laughs once, self-consciously, “It’s apparently that time of year.” He runs a hand through his hair and adds, “Good for her on landing him, though, she’ll make Fanelia a good queen, given the time.”

    “What do you mean by that?” Eries says, jumping on his phrasing. Since living with Millerna, he had become much more accurate with his statements, and less likely to throw words around carelessly.

    “What do I mean by what?”

    “Given the time,” she repeats.

    Dryden starts a little, averting his eyes from the piercing blue of his sister-in-law. “She survived the last war- ”

    “There will be no talk of war!” Eries says loudly, slamming her empty hand on the writing desk in front of her. “I simply will not hear it.”

    “And she seems to genuinely care about him,” Dryden finishes, disregarding his sister-in-law’s outburst. “But if there’s another war, Fanelia may fall without the strong hand of it’s king, who also survived the last war.”

    Breathing heavily, Eries raises an arm in cold, regal grace, and points to the doorway. “Kindly see yourself to your son, my King,” she says stiffly, more detachment in her voice than he remembers having heard in ages.

    He turns and ambles off, like a revolving door, he passes Celena on her way in.

***

    Van sits up, awake to find himself in an unfamiliar bed.

    “Hitomi?”

    He looks around the room and finds it warm, very different from the rooms in Fanelia castle. A single other person is in the room with him, a young woman, and for a moment, in the dimly lit room, he thinks that perhaps it is Hitomi. Clouds break outside and a little light comes in through the curtains covering the window. He sees that she is not. The last thing he remembers clearly is fighting a battle inside the Temple above the castle, after his wedding ceremony and the subsequent coronation. Then, vaguer memories of a bright light, and stumbling.

    Noise outside draws his attention to the window, and he starts to move towards it, trying to get out of bed, but his body decides, at that moment, to remind him of the battle he just survived. He lets out a short exclamation, and then clamps a hand over his mouth, but not soon enough to keep the woman from waking up.

    “Oh, you’re awake.”

    Van nods slowly, unsure how to take the girl’s presence, as well as his own.

    “I’m glad. I was worried that you were really sick.” She sits up and brushes her dark hair back from her face.

    A memory of his last time on earth hits him, and Van blinks. “You’re… Yukari…”

    The woman nods. “I’m glad you remember me. I’m sorry to say that my memory isn’t nearly as good as yours is. What’s your name again?”

    “Van,” he says, voice trailing off. He looks towards the window, and sees the moon alone in the sky. A shudder passes through him, and he lifts one hand to his head in order to mask his reaction to Yukari. ‘So this is Earth… the Mystic Moon. But… how did I get here… and how do I get home?’

    “You’re tired. You should rest some more. I’ll go and make you something to eat, are you hungry?” Yukari straightens her blouse and skirt as she stands up, stretching a little. The clock next to the bed reads 4:13 am.

    “That… will be fine,” Van says, his tone of voice dismissive.

    Yukari nods and turns, leaving the room. It is not until she is downstairs that she begins to feel a little resentful of his words, but she shrugs it off.

***

    Chid sits in the dining room alone, the doors to the windowless inner dining chamber lined by his royal guard, the only person visibly missing from attendance his Kathis, who, over the past few months, has proved most effective in her job. After the interrogation of the would-be assassins, she had stopped another two attempts to either kidnap or assassinate him.

    The most probable of the causes, in Fariah’s mind, was that whoever had kidnapped Millerna was making a play towards the other monarchs of Fanelia, including Chid. Whoever had orchestrated the first was probably responsible for the attack on Fanelia during the wedding ceremony.

    She still had no contacts within the area to call upon, Freid, high in the mountains, having no real contact with the normal type of informants that Kathis communicated with and would lend to one another. The only reliable network she had to draw from, she has found, is the people of Freid.

    It hadn’t taken long for their Duke’s new bodyguard to gain the trust of the people, and more often than not, rather than instilling fear in the citizens of the Duchy, she gave them a bit of comfort, always hovering a step behind and slightly to one side of their Duke. After word had spread that she had been injured protecting his life, she had become accepted as another part of tradition and formality that the Duchy seemed to thrive on.

    So the people had, as usual, let word get to the castle that strangers had entered the borders a few days ago, and would reach the castle soon. So, in preparation for the attack, she had set a little bit of bait with the young Duke as bait.

    Chid, knowing the situation, and having developed an implicit level of trust with his Kathis, eats calmly in silence until the action explodes into the inner dining room.

    The largest door at the end of the hall bursts open in an explosion of shards of wood and thick, gray smoke. Instinctively, Chid ducks, the attackers having used the most direct means to attack him.

    The three of them, or at least the three that enter first, move quickly about dispatching the guards around the room, for the most part merely knocking the strong men unconscious and moving on. Fariah had warned him about that. It was much quicker, she said, to knock someone out than to kill them.

*

    “A half dead man can still fight,” Fariah said to Chid the day before during his sparring lesson. “Whereas a properly unconscious man cannot. If I were ever to attack a large group in a small space, I would worry first about lowering my number of direct opponents, and then about singling out the best fighter among those remaining. Speed,” she disarmed him again, and nodded respectfully to him as she returned his weapon to him, “is of the essence.”

*

    His skill with a sword, while at turns undeveloped and ignorant, was there. Inherited from his father, though he was still ignorant about his true father’s identity, he quickly picked up proper sword technique once given proper instruction.

    As the three of his aggressors narrow in on him, Chid stands, and draws his own sword calmly.

*

    “You most likely won’t do very well against the trained assassins, yet, but the idea that you are lifting a sword against them will give you an advantage. There are a few moves in your own style that you overlook. I have seen them nowhere before I entered the training grounds here, and that is to your advantage.” She sheathed her own sword, “Fighting position, please, and I will show you what I am talking about,” and stepped behind him to guide his movements.

*

    The attackers look at one another.

    “Why don’t you put down your sword, Duke Chid,” the first says, stepping forward to take up a position across from him, “We have no intention of hurting you.”

    The second and third move towards the doorway, and Chid nods a little to himself, Fariah had expected that as well. Surprisingly, to him at least, he manages to generally hold his own against the one he had begun to think of as the “lead” attacker.

    Once he feels his arms begin to tire, and his mind overwhelmed at blocking the blows of his attacker, he attempts one of the moves Fariah had forced him to memorize the day before, and manages to get the sword from the attacker, following through to send it skittering across the stones and clanking into the thick wall behind him.

    In the moment of confusion, as Chid steps forward and lifts his sword holding the attacker at sword point, Fariah drops down from her position high in the ceiling. She had been in position long before he had entered the room, purposefully, so that he would not be tempted to look at her when they entered, and perhaps ruin the plan. Her thin, nimble body drops down to the table, landing on the balls of her feet and springing almost instantly into backwards hand springs in the direction of the two near the doorway.

    The other two, blinking and not expecting a counter attack from inside the room, are too shocked, at first, to react. Fariah easily disarms the first with a well-placed kick, and as the second one acts, she is forced to duck a sword blow, making the attacker hit his comrade grazingly across the stomach.

    A moment later, the last of the swords goes clattering across the floor, and Fariah brings the hilt of her sword down, mercilessly, one first one forehead, then the other. She turns and walks over towards where Chid still holds the nervous ‘lead’ attacker at sword point.

    Her boots, the same worn pair that she had walked across Gaea to get to Freid in, make no noise on the stone in the room other than a faint whisper across the smooth stone floor, and her breathing is nearly silent. The only noise in the room is the sound of the attacker’s nervous breathing. His brow sweats, and it trickles down the side of his face.

    “You shouldn’t be so worried,” Chid says easily, “I have no intention of having you killed.”

    “Not alone,” Fariah adds, stepping up behind him and lifting her sword to strike him on the back of the head as well.

    Chid glances up, quickly retracting his sword, and meets Fariah’s cold gray eyes. “What did you mean by that? ‘Not alone?’”

    “Calm yourself, Chid, I have no intention of hurting him or his compatriots, but then I am not in charge of what happens to prisoners. And by eliminating the threat of death for their actions, you have given them hope of escape.”

    Chid frowns, not liking this tactic at all, but has no chance to speak to her about it as more members of his guard rush into the room to take care of the thwarted assassins.

***

    The morning comes too soon, and Hitomi, curled up in Van’s oversized bed, is awoken by the sunlight. “No wonder he takes breakfast so early,” she thinks aloud, trying to turn over and avoid the sunlight. It doesn’t work, however, and so she resigns herself to rising.

    The castle staff, slightly unsettled by the sudden lack of a king to prepare things around, is slightly unprepared for the newly crowned queen to descend from the King’s chambers looking, passively, for breakfast. Several of the head servants, however, gladly snap their workers into shape, glad for some semblance, however accidental, of the normal routine to cling to.

    Seated, alone, at a table in the royal dining room, Hitomi keeps her own council as the servants bring her food and drink, eager to please. ‘It’s too formal without him here,’ she thinks to herself. ‘I feel like a guest, still… and no one’s around to make everyone stop tripping over themselves for me.’ After a moment of self-pity, she admonishes herself.

    Afterall, she thinks, she had survived a war, and the loss of everyone she loved. Getting a bunch of servants to treat her like a human being would be no problem.

    “What’s your name?” she asks, pointedly stopping the serving maiden as she refills her orange juice glass needlessly.

    The servant, so greatly shocked by this, stutters and nearly drops the pitcher in her hands. She quickly mumbles an apology and retreats from the room. Finishing her breakfast with a slight frown, Hitomi gathers herself and prepares to visit the wounded.

    At least I finally know my way around the castle, she quips to herself as she makes her way down the tall hallways, her footsteps echoing a little, despite the carpet and the wooden ceilings. She hadn’t taken much time, before, to spend getting to know the building that Fanelia Castle was, and so she slows her walk to take it in.

    The prospect of greeting wounded soldiers and a guilty-feeling cat woman don’t make her too ecstatic, after all. The battle still fresh in her mind, she forces herself to tune it out in favor of presenting the people with a good face.