Title: Royal Duties [Part Three]
Series: Vision of Escaflowne
Rating: PG-13 for some violence.
A/N: Part 2, clearing up some confusion, creating some more, most likely. Sorry it took so long. ~_~

***

    Yukari was a little worried that something had happened to Hitomi’s American friend, Van, because it seemed like he didn’t remember much of how things worked. She spent several hours going over the appliances in the house, and then she had to leave and head home to Amano. The odd thing was, the ‘American’ Van spoke flawless Japanese.

    Van had suffered through her explanations only because it seemed the only way to get her to leave him in peace, shuffling after her about the house despite the screaming protest of the pain running through his body. Once Yukari left, he securely locked the door and collapsed on the couch in the main room. His mind was reeling.

    ‘How did I get here?’ the question echoes in his head, but no answers are forthcoming. The room, quiet and cool in the early afternoon, feels comfortable to him, nonetheless, and after a long hour spent racking his weary mind for clues as to how he got to the Mystic Moon… no, he corrects himself, to Earth, he gives up, turning his mind to ways to get home.

    Until something distracts him.

    Across the room, on a bookshelf, he sees photographs, and gets to his aching feet to cross and examine them.

    “Hitomi,” he says softly, fondly as he looks at the pictures, seeing images of her and her family. He smiles and runs a finger over her image, longingly.

***

    Sitting up abruptly straight in the meeting with Van’s advisors, Hitomi glances around, green eyes wide as she feels the presence of her husband.

    “Highness?” Peralis asks, stopping in his oral recitation of the most recent events around Gaea in relevance to the war that was brewing. “Is something the matter?”

    “…Van,” Hitomi says softly, glancing out the window. Hitomi had always had a level enough head for things like politics, but the revulsion in her mind towards the idea of war is almost overwhelming to her. She wishes, silently, to wake up each day and find Van leaning in the doorway to the bedroom, wearing a smirk and with his dark hair falling disheveled over his eyes.

    But that was simply not the way things worked.

    During the weeks leading up to the wedding she had studied Fanelia’s economy, and she and Van had reviewed the states of the provinces. At the time she had been half distracted, but she had since called her tutor to review the material with her. Fanelia’s army had been retrofitted since the last war, and were now better equipped, better staffed, and better trained.

    One of Van’s first official actions on their return from Pallas had been to increase the size of the military. It was not that they lacked the numbers to repel the invading forces the day of the wedding, simply that the attacks were well planned, and many of the soldiers on their own side were green.

    Far too many had died, in Hitomi’s opinion. And her opinion, at the moment, was the opinion of the crown, but in the quiet moments, when she went to the chapel to pray for those passed on, or when she was visiting those who were recovering, she knew that Van’s reaction would be the same.

    If he were there to give it.

    She consoled herself with the idea that he was, at least, not dead, just absent.

    Merle was finally feeling back to her old self, and had been helping Hitomi get a handle on things once again since she had been allowed out of her bed.

    Jade eyes stared out the window at the double moon in the sky and she sighs heavily, by now the entire attention of the advisors was focused upon her. She steeled herself and returned to the matter at hand. Van had warned her that she would find it hard to be taken seriously, and if she suddenly told the advisors she was hearing her absent husband’s voice and started looking day dreamy and gazing out windows for long periods of time, she knew she would lose what tenuous respect she had gained with them.

    “Nothing, Peralis,” Hitomi says, eyes turning with a determined smile to the advisors. The Queen’s advisors… Her advisors. ‘Hurry home to me, Van,’ she thought with a last glance out the window, ‘your country needs its king, and I need you.’

**

    “Highness?” Fariah calls into Chid’s bedchambers. She had instructed him to get some rest, overriding the demands of the foreign ambassadors and his advisors with a harsh glance and a hand reaching for the hilt of her sword almost imperceptibly. The hint had been taken, however angrily, and they had allowed their Duke to retire. Fariah’s entrance is mainly to check on Chid, so that she can decide whether or not he is fit to return to his duties.

    “You know better than to call me that,” Chid responds from the far side of the room where he is sitting in the windowsill.

    “You shouldn’t sit so close to the window, Chid,” Fariah chides, though she makes no effort to correct his foolishness, and crosses to stand behind him, looking out the window.

    The Duke turns to glare at his Kathis for a moment before turning back to the window. “I loathe war,” Chid says in a quiet voice.

    “You should,” Fariah responds, brushing her hair behind her ear.

    “Do you ever not have the answer to something?” he asks, piqued.

    “Yes,” she replies simply, following his eyes as he looks out on the countryside. “Often, but I don’t let that get in my way. I was taught to disregard uncertainty, and to act as though I was sure of everything.”

    “I was taught much less of that and much more of how to be fair,” Chid says, looking down at the mountains below the castle. “There is nothing wrong with me sitting at the window up here,” he replied, looking over at her, “there isn’t a weapon on Gaea that can shoot from the next highest rooftop into this chamber.”

    “It does not have to be a ground attack, Chid,” Fariah responds. “There are flying machines, and creatures that do not walk on the ground.”

    “None of which would penetrate this far into the castle.”

    “The Fanelian king has gone missing,” Fariah says after a pause. Chid stiffens and turns to her, an alarmed look on his young face. “And your birthday is coming up.”

    “And war is brewing... what’s happened to Van?”

    “No one is quite certain, and their government is sitting on any knowledge that they have of it. The Queen-”

    “The Queen?” Chid is puzzled, having been so wrapped up in the affairs of his own country that he hadn’t been through all the mail he’d received from other countries, and so, the wedding announcement had gone untouched on his large desk.

    “He disappeared on the day of his wedding to the woman from the Mystic Moon,” Fariah says softly. “I thought you were keeping up with your messages, Chid.”

    “I...”

    “You haven’t,” turning on her heel, Fariah heads to the door. “I will inform your advisors you are not yet ready to entertain them, and you will catch up on it.”

    Frowning, Chid starts to protest, but deep down, he knows Fariah is right. It is slightly annoying that the Kathis woman is more prepared to do her job than he is, but at the moment, he disregards his thoughts and looks back out the window over his country, idly wondering what might have happened if he hadn’t been born into a royal family.

    Of course he had no idea that he was only half royal.

    The door to his room opens again, and several servants enter, eyes downcast and averted from their Duke’s. At their heels, Fariah strides through the door and motions where to place the baskets that they carry, filled with the messages he had been too lethargic to answer or read through.

    As she is about to retreat with the servants, Chid speaks up. “Stay, please, Fariah.”

    Blinking, the slightly older girl pauses in the doorway, one gloved hand straying to the hilt of her ever-present sword before she allows the doors to close and reenters the room tentatively, at first. “Do you need something?” It is odd, to her ears, to hear him using her name.

    “A little company that will look me in the eye. And some help.”

    Settling herself on the floor opposite the baskets, she reaches into it. “We should get started then, Chid, there’s a lot to get through.” He moves down to sit across from her on the padded mat covering the stone floor and puts a hand into the basket. “That’s why you prefer to visit your Aunt so much, isn’t it?” she asks him, not looking up from the letter she is reading.

    “Hm?” he asks, putting aside the old announcement. His blue eyes flick up to stare at his Kathis closely as she makes her controlled movements through the letters.

    “No one in your own country will treat you as an equal, out of respect and deference for your position.”

    “Out of some lingering fear of my father’s iron fist, more likely,” Chid says softly. “Duke Mahad was a dark, looming man. Very cold, very formal.”

    “Sounds like a very lonely childhood.” She sets aside her next letter. “I can relate.”

    “How’s that?” he asks, interested.

    She looks up at him pointedly, and back at the two baskets before them.

    With a sigh, he returns to opening them. “Surely you don’t think that I got this good at my job by being left to my own devices and thinking really hard about it?”

    “I never said that,” Chid replied.

    “I am aware that you didn’t, but it was implied. However, since you do not know this, I will tell you. From the moment I was old enough to walk I was training in some manner. Running, languages, strategy. Before coming here, I spent three years having daily etiquette lessons, in preparation.”

    “What about family?”

    “I was raised to have no family.”

    “But everyone has a family, Fari. You aren’t just born out of the ground.”

    “I know my mother, and was never allowed to meet or be told who my father was,” she said in a voice almost too low for him to hear. “The world of the Kathis is matriarchal, because most royals are male. And therefore, in order to complete all our duties, most Kathis are female.”

    “All your duties?”

    “It will not come to a time in which you will need to know what I mean by that, and if it does, I will explain that to you.” Fariah worries her lower lip, though, thinking about her mother and what had happened to her mother recently. She wonders if it’s true what Jujiin had said about her mother having returned to the compound. From what she knows of the woman, it would not be an easy thing for her to admit defeat and return to the relative safety of the Compound, especially with what that would mean she would have to do.

    Chid rolls his eyes and returns to his letters, both curious and unhappy that the wasn’t getting an answer out of her. It is different than he expected, having her around. The idea of a personal bodyguard to him had always before meant someone that would do his bidding and follow his orders, and though Fariah always seemed to be working in his best interests, she rarely followed his orders in the way everyone else in the palace seemed to.

    It is, he finds, both refreshing and annoying. No, not annoying, hard to get used to.

**

    “Asturia needs an answer, your majesty,” one of the advisors says as Peralis prepares to close the meeting.

    “We will give an answer,” Hitomi begins, still disturbed by the call she had heard earlier, “when there are more facts.”

    However, given that little opportunity, the other advisors chime in. “All the Princess Eries is asking is whether or not Fanelia would support Asturia in a war against Norte,” Lord Brett chimes in.

    “Given the current situation of the country, we are more than prepared to go to war, your majesty,” the commander of the royal military says.

    “And after the attack on the palace during the wedding, I would think that you would have fewer hesitations about agreeing to help the Astons, your majesty.”

    Standing with a look very similar to Van’s when he gets angry, Hitomi glares the room into silence. “I allow your suggestions and I welcome your comments out of deference to your appointed positions. I trust the judgment of my husband that he would not appoint advisors that would be so narrow minded as to give him bad advice.

    “However,” she pauses, adjusting the fall of the gown around herself absently and straightening her back, “I am also understanding of the fact that most of you did not experience the last war first hand. After experiencing that war, in which all of the nations of Gaea were at arms, I find myself as reticent as Princess Eries to commit to military action. As does Van.

    “You will receive my answer when I have made it. This meeting is adjourned.”

    And without another word, Hitomi steps down off the platform raising the chair above the advisors and leaves the room. Peralis hurries after her as she heads out of the chamber, the doors opened before her by two guards.

    Nothing is spoken between the two of them for a long while, until they reach the parapets and Hitomi continues to walk, slipping off her circlet and inspecting it with downcast eyes.

    “I miss him,” she says quietly.

    “Undoubtedly, your majesty.” Peralis walks quietly beside her. “Between the two of us, what would you do if it came to war?”

    There is a long pause in which the slight breeze over the castle wall is refreshing in the midday sun. And then Hitomi speaks, words full of steel, “I will not see Fanelia fall to anyone. If it comes to that, Fanelia will fight.”

    “A wise decision.”

    “It is the decision that Van would make. That is enough.” She pauses. “I am going to the chapel. Please have Merle sent to meet me there in an hour.”