Vision Of Escaflowne Fan Fiction ❯ Mark of a Goddess ❯ Forbidden City ( Chapter 23 )

Chapter Twenty-Three

Forbidden City

 

Hitomi parked her car and plugged the meter before heading into the building where her mother worked. It had been about two weeks since the showdown in the Dragon Slayer stadium. Christmas was coming now and the Christmas lights on the streets were finally making the dark winter seem cheery. Hitomi almost wished that she and Van were going to stay in the city for the holidays, but Dryden had finally given them his wedding present and no one thought it was a good idea for Hitomi and Van to live in the city from now on. That was why Hitomi had to come and talk to her mother. She was leaving the city and she didn't think she and Van would ever come back.

She walked into the building and greeted the receptionist. Then she walked past the bullpen and followed the hallway to her mother's office.

“Hi,” Hitomi said, tapping her knuckles on the doorframe.

Her mom got up from her desk and took Hitomi in her arms. “I'm so glad you're okay. You should have come here earlier.”

Hitomi hugged her mom and thought about how much had changed since the last time she had embraced her.

“You didn't even say `good-bye' to me before you left.”

“Sorry about that,” Hitomi said, pulling away. “That couldn't be helped. I didn't want you to try to convince me to stay. It was just impossible, so I didn't say anything to you on my way out. What can I say? I'm not very good at checking in with my parents.”

Her mother smiled and looked at her happily, though a little puzzled. “Now Hitomi, it's eleven thirty in the morning. Why aren't you at school?”

Hitomi pulled at her collar to show her mom that she wasn't wearing her school uniform. “I thought maybe the school had called you to complain about my poor attendance. I haven't been back there since I left home.”

“I don't think they called. If they did, they spoke to your father, but why are you skipping class? Don't you want to graduate from high school?”

“I wanted to take you out for lunch,” Hitomi said, avoiding her mother's question. She'd explain everything to her at the restaurant. “It's almost your lunch break, isn't it?” Hitomi put her thumbs into the belt loops of her jeans, and leaned back, waiting for her mom to answer her. “You didn't have plans, did you?”

“No,” her mother answered. She picked up her jacket and got her purse out of her desk drawer. “Do you know where you're taking me?”

Hitomi had given some thought to this moment. It was like Van. The way he went out of his way to spoil her, just before he gave her bad news. She was planning to take her mom somewhere a little different, so that she would never forget that day, and the feelings Hitomi had. “I thought we'd go to The Vineyard,” Hitomi suggested. It was the restaurant Van had taken her the evening he gave her the jewel necklace.

“Did you make a reservation?” her mother asked skeptically.

Hitomi nodded that she had, and they walked out together.

Once on the street, Hitomi jingled the keys to the convertible and said, “Oh, and Mom, I have my car with me, so I'm driving.”

“What?” her mother asked, as Hitomi unlocked the passenger-side door for her. “You have some explaining to do,” she said, looking at the car.

“I know,” Hitomi said, getting in beside her. “That's what this lunch is all about. I really have to do some explaining. I haven't done much of it thus far, but today I'm going to talk to you for real.”

Hitomi's mom respected Hitomi's wish to keep things quiet until they were at the restaurant, so they didn't talk much in the car.

Once they were at The Vineyard and their meals were ordered, Hitomi started to explain, “Last May, I met this guy named Van. I know we've talked about him a little, but I have never explained my relationship with him, and I think it's time I told you the truth, because …” Hitomi wanted to choose her words very carefully. She'd tried to rehearse what she was going to say to her mother, but there was no lightweight way to say it. “You see … you're not going to believe this.”

“Just go slowly,” her mom gently encouraged.

“I guess I'll start by telling you about him. He's twenty-two, and he graduated from university last spring with a bachelor's degree in chemistry. I'm only telling you this, because he told dad he was nineteen when he broke into the apartment last summer.”

“Oh,” her mom said simply, leaving Hitomi lots of room to give the remaining details.

“He lied and you have no idea how much lying I have done since I came home. I tried not to, but Dad pushed me and I ended up having to tell half-truths. I always intended on coming clean with you, but I had to hang on until the moment was right and Dad wouldn't wait.” Hitomi took a deep breath and continued, “I just don't want you to think that Van's a bad person because he lied to Dad. He's not. He's a really good person. At the time, Van probably didn't want Dad to think he was a cradle robber, since apparently, he told Dad he was in love with me.”

“Is he in love with you?”

“Yes,” Hitomi said quietly.

“And that's his car out front? It's nice of him to let you borrow it.”

Hitomi bit her lip. This was her opportunity to get the truth out. She couldn't bypass it. “Actually, he didn't let me borrow it. It's our car together - his and mine.”

Her mother looked at her blankly, like she wasn't sure what to say.

Hitomi could see that her mother wasn't prepared for the news she was about to spill, but Hitomi might as well get on with it. Her mother was never going to be ready for it. “You see,” Hitomi said. “I'm in love with him too, and we're--”

“Moving in together …” her mother finished flatly for Hitomi. Her tone was one hundred percent unimpressed.

That was Hitomi's cue. “Yes, but you don't understand. When I was living with you, and Dad, and Marlene after I came back, I should have been living with him. He's my husband.”

Her mother gaped. “What?”

“I know it's a lot to take in, so I'll explain in more detail. When he was breaking into the apartment, he wasn't stealing that picture of Marlene like he told Dad he was. He was getting my birth certificate, so that we could be married.”

“Why didn't you just come for it yourself? You could have come and introduced us … and invited us to the wedding!” Her mum spoke softly, but it was obvious she was quite hurt and completely bowled over.

Hitomi was expecting this, but she had to try to make her mother understand without putting her family in turmoil. “Mum, the story of how all this happened is too outrageous. I don't think you'll believe me.”

“Try me,” her mother said dangerously as she tapped her nails on her water glass.

Hitomi knew this was going to be difficult, but she thought she prepared herself for what would happen here. Even if her mother pitched a fit, at least Hitomi could walk out of the restaurant without worrying that she hadn't tried her best to place her trust in her mother. “Van isn't an ordinary guy … and I'm not an ordinary girl. Do you remember how you said that we have a family secret? You said that Akira was in on it and you weren't?”

“Yes,” her mother said slowly.

“I know what the secret is.”

“And you're not going to tell me, right?”

“I want to tell you,” Hitomi said. “I want to tell you what the truth is. It just takes a long time to explain and it's too weird. Akira had a tattoo of a butterfly. She was a magical creature who could change her age and appear to be a crone or a child. She was inexplicably tied to the underworld and could see and talk to ghosts. I read her memoirs. She was in love with a ghost named Dominic, which is why she never got married.”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “Please be quiet. You can't be serious. Please don't tell such insane lies about my very own sister.”

“Lies!” Hitomi blurted. “I'm like her. I can do things like her.”

“What? I'm getting very impatient, Hitomi. Nothing you do makes sense anymore. I thought I could believe in your outbursts, that it was just the wildness in our family coming out in you, but I'm not sure anymore. Akira was sensible compared to you. Your father says that you ran away from home to be with this guy - Van - and then you ran away again and Marlene says that you started living with this different guy named Dryden. Now you're telling me this ridiculous story to try to win me over. You do not make any sense. You're not into drugs, are you?”

Here, Hitomi was temped to transform into someone else just to convince her mother that she wasn't lying or full or crap. The most tempting person she thought of was her father. That would freak her mother out, but maybe there were too many people in the restaurant to fool around with her abilities here. If she wanted to do something like that, then she'd have to wait.

“Fine,” Hitomi said, while her mother waited anxiously for Hitomi to answer the question about whether or not she was on drugs. “I'm not on drugs,” Hitomi said at last, and her mother's shoulders relaxed. “I didn't just come here to tell you I was married. I came here to tell you the truth about my `wild behaviour', but since you won't listen to the truth about Akira or me then I'll have to tell you my last piece of news.”

“Okay,” her mother said tolerantly.

“I'm leaving the city the day after tomorrow. Van and I are moving to the coast.”

“Where exactly? Do you have an address?”

“Not really,” Hitomi answered noncommittally.

“Will the two of you come to visit? Will I even get to meet your husband?”

“I don't know,” Hitomi said, looking at the ceiling instead of at her mother's face. It was too hard to look into her mother's eyes, since Hitomi suspected that it might be the last time.

Then the waiter placed their dishes in front of them and Hitomi started to eat. It was too depressing, but Hitomi felt like this agonizing mood that had settled between her mother and herself would never dissipate. This was going to be the way she was going to remember her mother. Hitomi sighed and took a drag on her water glass. Maybe all that Chid had told her about the way people absorbed information was true. No one easily accepted the reality of Tarot users. That was why everyone always learned things so slowly, why Akira had chosen to live alone, and why Tarot users had to bunch together and stay together. They were the only ones who understood.

“Why would you say something like that about Akira?” her mother suddenly asked.

“It's only the truth. After great-uncle Minami died, Akira went to go live with his widow so that she could be a medium between the two of them. Apparently, Minami still had a lot to say to his wife even after he died. Sort of romantic for them and a little twisted that it placed Akira right between the two of them. Marriages aren't good when they include three people,” Hitomi said boldly. She was thinking that she might as well go down in a blaze of sparks as fade quietly. “That would explain a lot of Akira's teenage loneliness, wouldn't it?”

“So you know all about her?”

“Not really. She didn't write a lot about her life. She talked about street racing, her love affair with Dominic, a little about a fling she had with Van's brother. I think you said you knew him - Folken Fanel.”

“Folken is Van's brother?” her mother exclaimed.

“Yes. He's been in the paper a lot lately,” Hitomi commented. Folken had been working hard to rip the Zaibach Group up by the roots. She and Chid had made him promise he would do so before they let him go with Naria and Eriya. Even though it was a lot of trouble for Folken because he still wasn't completely healed, he was a very good candidate for aiding the police in ridding the city of syndicate crime and getting those hordes of teenagers into detox. The Voltage Room had stacks of incriminating files and evidence of wrongdoing about all the Zaibach group's illegal drug and arms dealers. Folken had made a plea bargain with the police - all his evidence for protection. Hitomi was thrilled. She dreamed of him doing that when she went to fight him two weeks ago. It hadn't been possible then, but now, he was working hard. It was fun to watch him work. The police thought they were protecting him. They had no idea that it was The Sorcerer who was protecting them.

“But he's a mobster!” Hitomi's mother wailed.

“Not anymore. He gave all that up,” Hitomi said, spooning her soup into her mouth.

“But what about Van? Has he ever been involved in something like that?”

“Have you been following the story?” Hitomi asked.

“A little.”

“Then you've read about The Dragon Slayers. Van's code name is `The Dragon'. The person they were trying to kill was Van, but all that is over now,” Hitomi said indifferently.

“And you want to be with a guy who's being chased by gangsters?”

The look of concern on her mother's face bothered Hitomi. She wasn't sure how to react to it. In situations like these, what Hitomi wanted to do most was say something that would shock her mother. Hitomi sat there with her tongue in her cheek and tried to decide if there was a good reason to hold back.

“Mom, I have done insane things since I met Van and Millerna died. I was kidnapped from home. Surely, you don't think that was a prank by Van and his friends. I was honestly kidnapped by gangsters. I was beaten up and taken to their hideout where they strapped me to a huge dartboard in front of a studio audience. If Van hadn't saved me, I would have become target practice, and I'm not sure what I would have become after a situation like that. Tons of stuff has happened since then. I have been attacked by crazies and drawn their blood since then. I have caused massive disturbances at bars and fought bodyguards and bouncers by myself and come out clean. I've been in car chases in stolen vehicles. I've been serenaded by a popular singer, been proposed to by a gangster, got married in a church while wearing a graduation dress, I've skipped school, hung out with important corporate officers and done a hundred and one other odd and incredible things.”

“And you expect me to believe all this?” her mother asked angrily.

“Before I came here, I thought that you would believe it, but apparently not. That's okay, though. Don't think that I came to burden you with my problems. I just wanted to let you know why I was M.I.A. and let you know that I still love you and Dad and Marlene. I just don't know how to live with you all now that I'm married and I am what I am.”

“And what exactly are you?” her mother fumed.

“A goddess,” Hitomi answered, without flinching.

“Huh?” Now her mom looked flabbergasted.

“It's just a title,” Hitomi said, looking away from her mom and into the dinning room.

“So, you're leaving the day after tomorrow?” her mother asked, changing the subject to something reasonable. “Did you say what city you were planning on moving to?”

“We're not moving to a city,” Hitomi said.

“Town then?”

“Not a town.”

“Where are you going, Daughter dear?”

“A friend of ours has given us a wedding present - a yacht. We're picking it up on the coast and then we might sail to Mexico or China. I don't know. We'll be there for Christmas, so please don't buy us any presents.”

“A yacht?” her mother asked suspiciously.

“Look, you've already made it quite clear that you don't believe anything I say. I can prove everything very easily, but I don't think you want to believe me. I'll send you some pictures, but I wish that we could just get along and have a bloody happy ending. I don't know when I'll be back, Mum.”

“I just don't know how you can trust these people!”

“They are my race,” Hitomi said, suddenly grabbing her mother's hand under the table and forcing their eyes to meet. “I'm not human, Mom. I'm a little different from Akira. I'm not going to age and I'm not going to die. It runs in our family that the oldest female child is this way - except for Minami. He was like me, but he was the only man in our family that was this way for generations.”

Her mother tried to free her hand under the table.

“Why are you fighting me, Mom? Are you afraid of me? Do you think that I'm going to hurt you?” Her mother wasn't looking at Hitomi, but instead at someone standing on the other side of the table. Had the waiter come back?

Hitomi turned and saw a lovely dark haired youth. His hair was falling into his eyes and across his lean cheeks. He was wearing a tailored black leather jacket and dark blue jeans. It was Van. Thank goodness.

“Can I join you?” he asked Hitomi pleasantly.

Hitomi let go of her mother's hand. She nodded and moved in the booth to allow space for him.

Van smiled and introduced himself to Hitomi's mother. “I'm Van Fanel,” he said warmly. “Hitomi told me that she wanted to come and talk to you about this on her own, but I didn't think it was nice of me to let her talk to you entirely by herself.”

“Very gentlemanly,” her mother commented.

“I would have been more gentlemanly of me if I'd introduced myself to you properly before the wedding, but it wasn't possible.”

“I still don't understand why it `wasn't possible',” she said. Hitomi couldn't figure out if she was angry or pacified.

“It's a long story,” Van said.

“And are you going to start spouting the same story Hitomi has already tried to lay on me? That she's a goddess and inhuman? Who could believe a story like that?” her mother fumed.

“I guess you don't have to believe it if you don't want to,” Van said reasonably. “The thing is that if we show you exactly how different we are from normal people, then after we leave, you could reason yourself out of believing that what we showed you was true. Seeing isn't always believing.”

“So you won't show me anything?”

Van frowned and said quietly, “I'm more trigger-happy than Hitomi and am I not as shy about showing what I can do. I don't have a problem showing you the difference between us and regular humans, but I only want to do it if Hitomi is comfortable. Hitomi?” Van asked, turning towards her. “Can I show your mother something?”

Hitomi clenched her teeth and nodded. Van was reacting to her mother's hostility, even though they had just met. He was getting angry.

“You weren't going to drink the rest of your water, were you dear?” Van asked.

“No,” Hitomi said, pushing the goblet towards him.

“Thanks,” Van said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue plastic lighter. He cracked the case with his thumb and poured the lighter fluid into the water. He dropped the wet, broken lighter on a white napkin and carefully dried his fingers on the corner of it. “Ready?” he asked his mother-in-law.

She raised an eyebrow and said that she was.

Once the fluid settled on top of the water Van snapped his fingers and the fluid in the glass started on fire. The flames leapt past the rim.

Hitomi felt her heart beat. One beat, two beats, three beats. On the third beat, Hitomi put out her hand and froze the glass solid. The ice was so intense that it covered Hitomi's hand and she couldn't put the glass down.

An uneasy moment passed before Hitomi's mother slumped her shoulders and said coldly, “You said he had a degree in Chemistry, didn't you?”

Hitomi exhaled a heated breath and let the ice on her fingers melt. “So, you still don't believe us?”

“You know, that sort of thing can be done as part of a magic trick. Your father and I were watching T.V. the other night and we saw—“
“I don't care,” Hitomi said, allowing her head to fall against the cushions in the booth. “Why don't we just pay the bill and we'll take you back to your office? It's clear that we're never going to get through to you, so let's finish up. Van and I are moving and we have a lot of work to do before we leave.”

Van drove them back to the office, because Hitomi was clearly too distraught to concentrate on city traffic.

When they pulled up in front of the building, her mother turned around in the passenger seat and asked Hitomi, “What do you have to do to get ready to leave? Do you need to pick up your things from our apartment?”

“No,” Hitomi said. She was so depressed now that she couldn't even feign civility. “We're only taking our clothes with us and I already took all I need from the apartment. Thank you for the offer, but when I said that we have things to do, I planned to go to the cemetery this afternoon and pay my respects at Millerna's grave.”

“What do you want us to do with your stuff?” her mother asked.

Hitomi suddenly didn't want to be ungrateful for all that her parents had done for her. They had been good parents. It seemed cold to say that it could all be thrown away, because she didn't need it. “Why don't you hang onto it, in case I ever do come back?”

“You don't think you'll ever come back?” she asked sadly.

During a moment like this, it would have been convenient if Hitomi could have transformed into Akira, just so she could show her mother undeniable proof that there was something different about her. That would have been perfect, except that Hitomi could not transform into anyone who did not require judgment. Akira was dead. She was past judgment. Hitomi wasn't sure if there was anything she could do. Maybe it was impossible for her mother to believe her, even if she transformed into someone else.

Hitomi couldn't deny the truth of her ability. The truth was that the reason she was able to transform into other people was so that she could discern their feelings a little bit without using her full vision and discovering all about them. It was quieter; less intrusive. Hitomi had used this ability falsely so many times. She had tricked Allen into believing that she was Marlene to test him to see if he really would keep his word to Van and to trap him in a closet. She had also used it to trick Folken into talking to her, and she had thought of using it for wrong reasons a lot of times. But what should she do now? It was wrong to transform into someone else and receive insight about his or her feelings for her own selfish reasons.

There was no way to prove to her mother through her own abilities that she was a Tarot user without doing something overblown and unnecessary.

Finally, Hitomi had a touch of inspiration and she said softly to her mother, “I've thought of one last thing. Do you remember a little girl I used to play with when I was a child? Her name was Aya?”

“I remember her face,” she answered.

“That was Akira. I told you that she had the power to change into any age she chose. She turned herself into a child and came to visit me because she wanted to teach me about myself without interference.” Hitomi looked closely for her mother's reaction.

Her mother bit her lip and fumbled with her keys for a moment before she grabbed the car door handle. “Can I give your father a message?”

Hitomi put her hand on her shoulder. “Tell him I love him and I'm sorry for being impossible.”

Her mother nodded before turning to Van and saying, “Take care of her. I want to stop her from going, but I can't, so you had better be a good man.”

“I will be,” Van promised solemnly. Then he suddenly got out of the car and came around to the passenger side. He opened the car door for his mother-in-law and then opened Hitomi's. “I don't like to see it end like this. Hitomi thinks we're going to disappear off the face of the Earth, but we will meet again. If you don't believe us now, you will in thirty years when Hitomi still looks as fresh as a high school student.”

Hitomi hugged her mother tightly and they said their good-bye.

Hitomi couldn't tell if her mother cried. All she could feel were her own tears and the horror of the final moment. It was the moment when she became a woman and parted ways with her parent by her own choice. She had to pull herself together, but instead she was choking. She was holding her mom so closely and then somewhere between hot tears of separation, she was no longer in the arms of a wise woman but in the arms of a tense young man. Hitomi raised her head and looked around blindly for her mother, but she was gone.

There was only Van. He put his arms around her firmly. “I love you. I need you,” he whispered into her ear. “I need you more than anyone else in the world. I need you to fill all those gaps in my life and I need to make you want to be everything to me.”

Hitomi put her hand to her mouth and fell into Van's chest.

“Besides,” Van said. “I think you convinced her with your last words about Aya.”