What kind of a person posts a sequel before they've finished the first story? I dunno. An impatient one, I guess, or maybe just somebody who wants to get as much other stuff up before NaNoWriMo rolls around and all fanfiction halts for a month. So...here's the sequel to "White Nymph," though knowledge of that story is definitely not necessary to understand this one, and really there aren't that many spoilers either. Just know that Rephina is a character from the video game who piloted a white Alseides, was stationed on the Vione, and liked Dilandau. A lot. She also was supposed to die...but then again, so was somebody else in here...(I will explain my reasoning for sparing both of them to anyone who asks. Nothing like making canon breakage a theme of your overall work, heheh.) In "White Nymph" I gave her the Dragonslayer Ryuon for a cousin, as well as a part-Asturian bloodline and a past occupation as a merchant.

Oh, and for anyone very literal reading this...I have fun with time in here. Each of the three parts of this chapter takes place at a different point in time. But I won't say the order. ;P.

I don't own Escaflowne, either.

Ghosts, chapter 1

Spring had come to the garden, blossoming forth in a cacaphony of flowers. Butterflies swept by the light breeze flitted through a sky quickly losing the sharp edge of winter. The world seemed smudged at the edges, silent and peaceful, with no hints that it had ever been otherwise.

They stood together looking into the garden, fingers linked lightly at their sides as they watched the young woman reading under a tree. A butterfly perched in her silver-blond hair; an apple with only one dainty bite removed weighed down her free hand. Bringing the fruit to her mouth absentmindedly, she bit down; slowly she chewed, seemingly ignorant of the fact that she was eating at all.

The butterfly grew bored, it seemed, and meandered off elsewhere. Pulling her hand free of her companion's hold, the woman watching the girl turned her head to follow its path instead, a sort of wistful contemplation brushing across her sharp features for a minute and settling in her electrically blue eyes. The young man, deprived of her hand to hold, placed his arm around her shoulders instead, weaving his arm under her long blond ponytail.

"He's really gone, isn't he?" Though she phrased it as a question, there was no room for argument in her soft voice.

"We did our best. We made our choice. Even he couldn't have expected anything more, despite what he might have thought about the outcome." The young man, barely out of boyhood, stood half a head shorter than his female companion and so was forced to tilt his head up as he spoke to her. "I think he'll forgive us."

"I hope he's happy now." They were back to watching the girl again.

"Was he ever?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. Looking back...I was dreaming the whole time, wasn't I?"

"Don't. I had the same dream. We all did. What's the point in regretting now?"

"There's never a point. It just happens." Bitterness crept into her voice, contracted her thick eyebrows. She sighed. "It's just...For a while, I could fly. With his help..."

"I know. Everyone could. He had that effect on people, despite all he did, and he didn't even know it. It was the best part of the dream to me." He leaned his head on her shoulder, watched the girl under the tree turn a page, carefully removing a caterpillar from where it had crawled up onto her book.

"Too bad it had to end."

o0o0o0o0o00o

The boy woke up after a sleep he couldn't remember. His throat ached something awful; each breath scraped itself along his windpipe with sharp edges certain, he thought, to draw blood. Adjusting his weight in bed, he winced as his left leg added its protests to those already being voiced by his neck. This is not good, he assessed mentally, not even bothering to scoff at his own oversimplification of the situation. Wounded in several areas, can't recall how I got that way, alone in alien surroundings with no recollection of arriving there...he is so going to have my hide. Unless I can make it up to him somehow.

There, that sounded familiar. He rubbed his neck in an automatic thinking gesture and cringed as his hand struck a tender, swollen bruise. What had he been doing recently that might have merited...

"Oh ho! So the victim awakens! Good to see you up and moving at last. Pardon my moving you, but I didn't think you'd want to be taking a nap in the street during an invasion." The single most strangely-dressed man the boy had ever seen stood in the doorway assessing him, flashing him an earnest smile from under a pointed nose and ridiculous circular glasses. Flicking thick brown curls out of his way with a tanned hand, the man removed the glasses and exposed dark-lashed, dark-green eyes. "In the future, try to avoid Godashim alleys. They aren't pleasant places under any circumstances. You're just lucky I'm an observant man. How are you feeling?"

The boy tried to form a reply but ended up croaking instead as his maltreated throat burned. He grit his teeth at the pain, not wanting the stranger--whoever and whatever he was--to see him hurting. He was enough at the man's mercy as it was.

Catching the pained expression anyway, the man sighed. "Sorry. I forgot about that. Don't worry about trying to talk until you're ready. From what I can tell, you're lucky to be alive. What did you do, anyway? Not many monks try to strangle a man. You must have really set them off."

He had been strangled?...But that didn't explain the sore leg. Had he gotten into a fight? About what? With whom? In Godashim...the capital of Freid. Why on Gaea had he been in Freid? He was stationed on the fortress...

"Dragon," he rasped suddenly, bits and pieces beginning to fall into place. "Where...dragon?"

The man raised a scruffy eyebrow. "In the woods outside Fanelia, for all I know. Don't they live there? Or what's left of Fanelia, anyway. Terrible thing, that...why would anyone do something so horrific?" The grin was gone; sober, the man achieved a grimness the boy wouldn't have thought possible in a man who wore a bow in his hair. "For that matter, why attack someone like you? You're just a kid...Ah, don't listen to me." He waved away war and assault like they were so many flies. "I'll just depress you if I start up on that. And you need your rest. Call if you need anything, and rest as long as you like. It's a big convoy. There's plenty of room for you." A final wave, and he was gone, not even giving the boy a name to call his supposed savior.

He didn't care. He'd stopped listening anyway, after what the man had said about Fanelia. Self-indignation stabbed his gut; he clenched his fists in the thick covers, blankets finer than anything he'd ever seen before, but he ignored them. Horrific? It had been a bloody nightmare--just thinking about it, he felt the heat of the flames wash over him-- but bastardizing the invasion was going too far. Too far, and yet too near--for how could this man, whoever he was, even hope to understand? That same fire which swept through the forest kingdom would someday purify and heal all of Gaea--yet what did the people do in the face of such a fate? The residents had screamed; some had run; some foolish folk had remained to try and defend against their phantom attackers. And they had lost their lives for it, the fools. For the sake of their hell-hole, backwater, flea-ridden country, they had thrown away their godsdamned lives.

The idiots. He didn't need their death throes on his conscience, but he felt no pity for them either. When your leader was a weakling who ran the first chance he got, you deserved any disaster that followed from obeying him. Only a strong leader deserved sacrifices. Only someone who deserved his position, not any old hick who just happened to live in a very big house on a hill and whose family happened to own a fancy sword. The boy didn't believe in the importance of bloodlines. He believed in nothing but skill.

Thinking about Fanelia had brought his more recent memories, strangely enough, a bit more up-to-date. He'd pursued that same "hick" for the sake of the only other relic, sword aside, that made the kid even the slightest bit special...he had fought the relic and due to sheer bad luck--it had to have been just bad luck, he could not have lost outright--had been taken captive. His worst nightmare realized: being at the mercy of his inferiors. No help had come for him, at least not at first. He hadn't expected any, and he hadn't felt he deserved any. Then that...that thing had come...and...

It was all so clear to him now. They had wanted them dead, hadn't they? His own side had used him and then tried to kill him after the enemy botched the job (his leg twinged at the recollection). They hadn't wanted him to return. To them, the minute he had been taken, he was already dead.

He began to wonder if anyone had lamented his passing before catching himself. Even if they didn't want him anymore, that didn't mean he was actually dead. From here, he could go wherever he wanted...yet the only place he truly wanted to be, could be, was on that fortress, with his fellow soldiers. He couldn't go back to his homeland if the military had declared him dead--once the mix-up was resolved, it would reflect badly both on him (for not returning to active duty immediately) and on his commander (for making an error--though whether that error would be declaring him dead prematurely or letting him live, he couldn't say). And he had yet to prove his loyalty. Returning even after his own supposed ally had tried to murder him--wasn't that a true sign of devotion?

But why get rid of him in the first place? If they were going to send down help, why not take him back with the creature? Because he'd failed, once again, to capture the dragon? Because killing him was better than letting him get imprisoned again? No one else had been deserted for failing in the line of duty...even those who had launched without permission...

That's right, they'd gone back for her, hadn't they?

Scowling furiously, he eased himself into a sitting position in the enormous bed and leaned his head back on a pillow, stretching the muscles in his sore throat and trying not to clench his jaw. It had been just a few days prior to his capture. The dragon had fled Palas after his commander had sought it out in the streets, and she had launched without permission in an attempt to intercept their retreating enemy. One-on-one, she hadn't stood a chance against the dragon, not in that freakish white melef she piloted; it had probably been her first battle in the thing, hadn't it? The dragon had pummeled her into the ground and kept on going, leaving her for dead as the fortress should have left her, but no. They'd sent down a retrieval squad. She, who'd never even seen a proper battle and had ended up in the army by a sheer fluke and a bribe, had been cared for. Whereas he, who'd had to earn his position, had been strangled in the gutter by a freak of nature!

She'd been in almost as bad a shape as he now was when they'd brought her, unconscious, back to the fortress. Her cousin had fretted and fussed over her like some fool woman and not the soldier he was supposed to be, staying by her bedside until she woke up. He only left once, and that had been to report to the commander what had happened. And during his absence, that idiot cousin of hers had asked him to look after her!

He'd said yes, of course. Because as much as he hated to admit it, he owed the useless woman his position among the elite. If she hadn't made a fuss at the recruiting desk that day, the commander might not have ever looked his way. He still didn't know what he'd done that merited the commander's approval, but he wasn't so ungrateful that he'd deny she'd had nothing to do with it. The day he'd learned she would be stationed with them he'd attacked so fiercely during training his sparring partner had been sent to the hospital wing. Yet he'd received no rebuke. He'd never done anything wrong. Why leave him? The commander had even called his name when he went down! The commander never acknowledged he paid attention to their problems in battle!

One shaking hand found its way to just above his heart, tried to clench the dog-tags and small gemstone that usually hung there, but closed over nothing but air. His rescuers had changed his clothes--that he'd noted upon waking without interest--but they'd also taken his I.D.. Which means they knew who he was. Which meant the strange man had been toying with him.

Damn! Why did everyone have to consider him some kind of plaything? He was a man--more than a man, he was a soldier, and an elite soldier at that! He was down but not out! So why treat him like he was dead or worse?

That did it. Wounds or no wounds, he was getting out. But his body had other plans: trying to get out of the bed, his bad leg buckled underneath him and he fell to the floor in a tangle of blankets and limbs, neck and leg burning anew. How disgraceful. But he couldn't get up. He could only lie there, fuming, as he thought of the peaceful expression on her face as she slept off her pain. When she'd woken up, her cousin had been there to hold her hand. Even the commander had stopped by to look after her, though mainly he'd just wanted to scold the cousin for shirking his duties. Yet here he was, in a strange man's bedclothes on the floor of who-knew-where, unwanted by his own army and betrayed by his own side. Being captured was enough of a blow. Did the shame have to pile this high?

His heart sank even lower as heavy footfalls heralded the stranger's reappearance. The last thing he wanted was to be discovered in such an ignominious position.

"Woah! Had a problem, there? Here, hang on." No, no. He didn't want this man's pity. If the only way to get back into bed was relying on that lunatic, he preferred the floor. But all the struggling he could muster wasn't enough to deter his rescuer--or was it captor?--from lifting him in surprisingly strong arms and gently placing him back on the bed, then smoothing the covers over him again. "I'd stay off that leg if I were you. It's not broken, but it got ripped up pretty badly." The man straightened, hands on his hips. "Anything else I can do while I'm here? Fetch a book, get medicine, whatever?"

The boy gestured furiously at where his dog tags usually hung, then pointed an accusing finger at the man. Surprisingly, the man caught onto the pantomime and pulled from a pocket the requested items, clinking the small jewel and the tag together as he shook them slightly. "You mean these? They were rubbing your neck. I figured you'd taken enough abuse in that area without getting chafed by your own ID. But if you insist..." The tags made a lazy arc in the air as he tossed them onto the bed. "Don't know what you can do with those, but if they make you feel better...Don't punish yourself too badly for whatever happened. I'm sure we can work something out with the army. They'll be glad to have you back, Miguel Lavariel." With yet another wave, the man breezed out of the room as nonchalantly as before.

The boy's violet-blue eyes bored holes in the doorframe where the man had been, yet he made no move to pick up the tags. So he thought he was so smart, did he? He thought he could just read a tag and think he knew everything? Well, that only showed his own ignorance. The most important item on that chain wasn't the small gold ID. It was the purple gem that hung beside it. That gem was his real identity. And the man would regret toying with one who wore the purple energist.

Wincing slightly, he leaned over and picked the necklace up, dropped it over his sore neck and ignored the tender areas as it scraped into place. He was stronger than that. He could take the pain, both of his wounds and of his predicament. The tag marked the injured boy as one Miguel Lavariel. The gemstone classified him as Miguel Lavariel, Dragonslayer.

o0o0o0o0o0

The girl stayed up through a night she'd never forget. She didn't need dreams, not this night. Not when reality had so recently become a nightmare. She didn't dare let her guard down now. If she tried to sleep...who would visit her in the vulnerable expanses of her mind? Her cousin, broken and bleeding before he met his final end in immolation? His companions, mercilessly slaughtered to a man? Or the one who'd stood by and let it happen, the one she'd trusted above all else?

By focusing on the betrayal, she could wall off some of the other pain. Yet she did not want to remind herself of what she'd seen. Of what she'd followed...and the lie it had turned out to be. Gods, it hurt to even think that. Even if she ignored the implications of her current cowardly position...hollow, witless scarlet eyes flashed before her vision for a moment, she could see him slumped on the ground; too shaken to even stand, he had fallen out of his guymelef and lay on the metal floor shaking before she finally had the presence of mind to come forward and try to help him up. She still didn't know if that had been the right decision. Because then those awful dead eyes had met hers, empty sockets of fear where flames had blazed. Where once there had been a god, she held what might as well have been a corpse. And in that moment, she had known: he had not avenged their deaths. He had taken advantage of some distraction or another to escape. And because of his cowardice, her cousin's murderer still walked free and unpunished.

She had no curses left for the dragon that had taken her cousin's life. All the venom in her body spewed out towards the man whose idol's patina had burned away in those blue flames--and inwards, towards herself. How could she have been so stupid? She should have known no man could cut himself entirely free of the world, could soar to the heights she had envisioned him reaching. Leviships aside, humankind was not meant to fly. She had been a fool to believe that perhaps he could.

But then again, when had he ever been helpless before? Even when one of his own had been taken, he'd remained calm until the very end, then snuffed out the traitor who'd dared to mess with his unit. She'd known all along he was tied to his men, yet she hadn't minded that connection, saw it more for their benefit than his own. He'd let them borrow his wings in hopes that they could fly on their own one day...or at least that was how she'd seen it, dazzled by his brilliance and the honor her cousin had been given. Yes, they had all been blinded. But did he have to rip the curtains away so violently?

Jeture, why hadn't he at least avenged them? If he was that much of a coward, how had he made it to his position? He'd avenged the prisoner...

Leaning her blond head against the corner of her barrack, she let anger at the dead man carry her along, finding it a much easier river to tolerate than the one threatening to drown her in her own shattered illusions. What had he done to deserve such special attention? He wasn't a hero like her cousin had been, facing the dragon in a desperate last stand; he hadn't gone down fighting. Instead, he'd let himself be taken prisoner and then, when given the chance to return to his unit, had chosen instead to enter combat with the dragon--a choice she could understand, as it was one she had made--except he had botched that too. She hadn't exactly succeeded herself, but fighting an opponent in a one-armed melef? That had just been stupid of him. He should have just flown away, reported back, and lived to take revenge another day. The two situations--his and the one her idol had failed in--could not have been more different in her mind. The traitor of her heart had been fighting in a fully operational machine.

Oh, she had mourned the boy's death, as had her cousin and the rest of his unit. Their communications expert had been especially desolate--for a spy and a cold-blooded warrior in battle, the small blond took everyone else's hurt to heart a surprising amount. Yet she had found consolation in the fact that the murderer had met an equally sticky end, and that her hero had delivered the judgment blow.

She'd even given the unworthy fallen a token of her own. During the fortress's short stay in Palas, capital of her grandfather's homeland, she had disembarked briefly to help with restocking and purchased for herself a large bouquet of roses from a street vendor. An Asturian custom dating back to more seafaring times dictated that all ships entering battle or dangerous waters should have one rose on board for each crew member, to be cast into the sea should said member not survive the trip. The rose would reach the sea dragon Jeture, the custom said, and he would look fondly on the soul of the drowned. Many leviship captains kept roses on board in remembrance of the tradition, and though she was not the superstitious type it made her feel better having the bouquet around. She and Jeture had what she would call a rocky relationship, mainly because the deity seemingly refused to listen to every single plea she made, but residual respect remained after years of service to an uncle who probably would have passed himself off as a full-blooded Asturian if given the chance.

So she had dedicated a rose to the poor boy, tossing it off the side of the fortress as his commander watched skeptically. She'd been flustered upon discovering the man had caught her in an act of foolish sentimentality, but after she stammered an explanation to him he had merely smirked and gone on his way. His method of remembering the dead ran more along the lines of sending the killers, not flowers, to the gods.

Her uncommonly bright blue eyes squeezed shut thinking of that smirk and the broken man it disguised; one hand ached as the small purple gemstone she held dug into her palm. The stone was not hers; her cousin had given it into her keeping for the day when he considered himself worthy of it, ready to accept what it meant. He'd never get to wear it now.

They should have told her they were going. They should have let her come along. She might have been able to help...and if not, better to be dead with her comrades than alive without them. This, then, was why she'd been so loath all her life to tether herself to other people. It wasn't because they were tying her down, as she'd believed in her restless youth. It was because when the tie was broken against her will, the wound would never heal. And she hated being that vulnerable.

"Soldiers don't cry," she reminded herself, yet she was not a soldier. She was a tagalong who'd shoved herself into duty by circumstance, who they'd wanted for her guymelef and not for her own prowess. The melef had a better deal; it could shed no tears for its fallen fellows, could feel no anger as it hung alone in the hangar with its wretched red counterpart. So balled up in a corner of her empty barrack--a barrack that would not ever again be filled, come morning, by boys eager to wake their sleepy lieutenant up--Rephina Caina Jetura began to weep, shamefully, for the loves she had lost and the dream that had died.

o0o0o0o0o0

a/n: Up next--Miguel gets to know his rescuer a little better and somebody steals a rose from Rephina's bedroom. And she may or may not meet some cats. That may have to wait for Chapter 3.