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*~::Black Orchids::~*


She didn't know that she would feel the way she does about him when she first saw him. She didn't imagine what type of person might have been hiding beneath those baggy clothes, tucked away in the shadowy corners of that laboratory trying to hide from the eyesight of anyone who wandered too close to his little haven. She didn't think about the dangers of pulling a young man in tatters out of a mysterious, forbidden laboratory of the Kirijo without knowing even the first thing about him, and she didn't care about the things he must have done to survive the end of the world until the moment that she had been searching through the flickering corridors and seen the tightly locked cell in which the boy curled up into a ball, alone. All she knew was the empty hopelessness in his faded, black eyes, an emotion that she had seen far too often since she left her home in the Nekata Village with her cousin and her young Uncle Nala in hopes of finding a better life with the Resistance. She knew the thin line of his emaciated cheekbones from other survivors they had encountered who hadn't eaten a thing for weeks on end, and she knew the faint flicker of hope and the way he stuffed it down inside of him because he couldn't allow himself to believe in anything good when he first saw her there, faintly outlined by the flickering lights in the hall, almost shimmering like someone ethereal with that silver hair and beaming smile of hers.

She had no way of knowing that to the eyes of that broken boy, however cliche it might have sounded, she looked like an angel rimmed in moonlight. She was mercy incarnate, a dream that he struggled not to cling to for fear of having it all ripped away from his desperately-gripping fingertips. She couldn't have known...but she was all, in that moment. When she assumed that he had been locked into the cell when he knew the truth that it was he who had locked himself inside to protect innocent people like her, he tried not to allow himself to be infected by the positive glow in her starlight eyes, not to trust in the hand that extended to him in genuine compassion when she straight pulled the cell doors down and stepped in to find him there, alone in the dark. He tried...for the sake of this adolescent goddess that had descended to pull him out of his own wicked nightmare, he had tried not to let her be pulled into the gravitation of his sickness. But he hadn't known that she was far too bright to be blocked out, far too persistent to be shaken away, and far too full of brilliance and beauty for him not to be sucked in.

...

She hadn't known him. He had tried not to be saved. But in the end, the magnetic forces of this ruined world had conspired against them.

Evie Nekata and Lael Sonoda met for the first time in an abandoned laboratory of the former Kirijo Group. Their hands linked for the first time when she reached into the darkness and delivered him from his self-imposed isolation into the infectiously optimistic world in which she chose to live. And together, their fates were bound by a red string that would last throughout the years and across dimensions and into the realm of waking dreams.

...

She didn't know when she had started counting the days since they had arrived at the Resistance's home base together, except that she had associated that number with the days that she had waited for him to speak to her. Pulling him out of the lab had only been the beginning of her interest in him, that protective and caring nature of hers wanting to make sure that the half-starved boy with the sad eyes was managing to pull himself together now that he was in the safety of a new home, away from the worst that the Corrupted World had to offer. He hadn't spoken to her on their way home, and he had barely been able to look at any of the members of their team save for her as they made the dangerous trek through the overrun cityscapes of this ruined world. Occasionally, she thought she could hear the low hum of his deep voice behind him, or the occasional sharp intake of breath from a stumble over some rubble or the like, and she hadn't realized it then that her curiosity began to grow like wildfire within her. What did he sound like? What was his name? Where had he come from? She hadn't even though to tell him her own name yet, so skittish he had seemed and so concerned with tempting him out of his hiding spot that she had been before. As they walked, she thought about the best time to tell him, but they had made it back to their haven before she had ever really found the right moment. From there, the boy had been consigned to the civilians' ward and the infirmary, to be given nutrients and looked over to make sure he wouldn't be a danger to the rest of the survivors. Two days had passed before they let him out, and when they had, the youngest Nekata had been waiting there for him, smiling brightly...she'd asked to be the one to show him the ropes in the base and they had granted her that responsibility happily. Everybody was so busy that showing around newcomers wasn't even a regular job that any of them had, but she always liked to take the time to help others get acquainted if she could. This, however, was different...it was kindness, sure, but it was also that nagging desire to know him eating away inside of her. It made her nervous, it made her smile, it made her...wonder what strange compulsion was inside of her that made her obsessed with the mysterious boy and who he was and what his story might have been? She greeted him with a smile when he finally emerged from the infirmary, and when he saw her, she noticed his eyes open a little wider on instinct, then soften...and even if she wasn't sure she hadn't imagined it, she thought he seemed a little more comfortable now that she was here. That was enough to spur her confidence...

"I'm glad they let you out!" she beamed, taking his hand to lead him around the base but releasing it almost immediately, her cheeks flaring pink, when she noticed the almost startled, flustered red cheeks on his pale skin and the wide dark rims of his eyes when he looked at her as she did. His nervous behavior made her flush, but somehow she didn't hate the feeling. His voice hummed in the back of his throat, but no words emerged, sadly. Still, she took it as a sign. And she smiled, as she always did for him.

"My name is Evie! Evie Nekata!"

...

Two weeks had passed, fourteen days, before the leaders of the Resistance and the doctors spoke to her again. She checked in on the boy often, but he had yet to speak with her or tell her the name that still plagued her thoughts. Each day she saw him restored a little more...until the rings around his eyes began to blacken darker and darker, his energy that had been restored began to fail him slowly. She wondered why, she worried, and then they came to her with the knowledge that made it all clear.

"He hasn't been sleeping..."

"Oh..."

Now she understood, the weakness, the rings under the eyes, but she didn't understand why he wasn't sleeping. She didn't know what compelled her to know, why she was so curious about this one person, except that there was something about him that made her want to look after him...made her want to protect him. She had pulled him out of the darkness and she hadn't forgotten that tiny look of trust in his eyes when he'd come out of the infirmary, and there was something mysterious and ethereal about him that just tickled at the back of her mind, made her want to know him. He was so lonely...he had been alone before, but even surrounded by people now, he was still alone. No one to talk to, nobody to look after him, nobody to make sure that he was taking care of himself...she sought him out in his room that night but found to her surprise that he wasn't there. He was nowhere, inside of the base, in fact. It was only when she'd stepped outside of the base in a panic to search for her missing ward that she saw him there, sitting beneath the moonlight surrounded by flowers in the tiny grove that was once the yard of some nondescript Yatagarasu warehouse and the ruins of the nearby town. The sky was bright with luminescent rays and the twinkling of far away stars, and the flowers, soft petals and thin stems swaying in the cool breeze. She felt her breath leave her and her heart skip a beat when she saw the way that the light reflected off of his too-pale skin, the gentle strands of obsidian hair that lifted with the wind, and as she stood watching, she heard that familiar low hum...

...His voice...

Her lips curled unbidden into a gentle smile, her shoeless feet carrying her unconsciously through the damp grass to the spot beside him. She sat down slowly at his side, and he glanced at her with his deep eyes, crimson she noticed now and not the black that she'd thought she'd seen in the shadows back at the Kirijo...and his lips matched hers in the softest of smiles. Sitting together now, all of her worries dissipated and she didn't know quite what to say to start the conversation with him that she'd been wanting to have together...to give voice to her worries and her curiosities...all she felt was the twitch in her fingers towards his own, and even keeping her hands to herself this time didn't stop the hint of pink from creeping into her cheeks as she watched this mysterious stranger gazing upon the stars.

"The world is a sick garden, flowers suckling toxic death from the miasma of man. Pink orchids whisper gasping prayers to the sky as their petals change to black. The blue sky is choked and gray, my beating heart is gripped and still, yet the moonlight of my life sows hope in my breast...dare I dream of sunlight?"

His words filled the atmosphere around them with the softness of a whisper, a little hoarse, a little cracked from disuse, but with an airy clarity that she could hear down to the very last syllable. She wasn't quite sure what his words meant, but they stirred something inside of her as well, a desire...a longing...a hope? She remembered her father Nagamasa and the way he held her on his lap as they looked up into the night sky together and matched the constellations with those on the cloak she would one day wear as her own, her mother's cloak she had been told. She remembered how much he loved her, how he said that her life inspired a change and a love in him that brought him hope in the darkest of hours. How she was his light...and right now, in this moment, she almost felt like she could understand him...even if she wasn't entirely sure why.

"It's pretty...is that a poem?" she asked curiously, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye and catching the tiny smile creasing the corner of his lips and using it to venture into perhaps difficult territory, "Mr. Cesc...that is, Mr. Ichiro...he says you haven't been sleeping, and I..."

"Lael..."

"Huh...?"

"My name, is Sonoda Lael."

...

He was never one for very many words, but she did enough talking for the both of them. She supposed that if she were a little more self-conscious she might have been slightly embarrassed by that fact, but Lael never really complained when she went on and on about the things she liked, the people in the base that were her dear friends, and more than anything else, the family that she adored more than anything. She had introduced him to Nala, but the mischievous young summoner was more often than not out running dangerous missions, his immense potential slowly making him into an ideal candidate to try and revive the knowledge of one of the Lost Names of the Kuzunoha. He had stated before it was one of his goals to recover every scrap of information that had been lost about the Ciela, Raidou, Geirin, and Kyouji names and bring them all to the Resistance so that the uncrowned heirs to the names and those that did not have one would all be properly trained to fully inherit what those Great Summoner Titles truly meant. It left him little time to meet Evie's friends, even if he always managed to make time for her. Naal was around much more often, but even if he was her partner in crime, he always had a wary eye out for Lael, which made the three of them uncomfortable together. Naal had a sense for repressed things like his mother, for seeing beneath the surface, and there was something he couldn't put his finger on about his cousin's newest companion that made him...uneasy. He didn't hate the boy at all, but he also...suspected him, a little. Of what, he didn't know, but he knew that Evie wasn't seeing whatever it was, either. That gave him all the more reason to be nervous.

So instead of spending time with her family, Evie spent more and more time with the mysterious pale boy. She spoke and he listened, and he'd speak the occasional poem that would leave her speechless, either in curiosity at what it meant or just because it tickled her so. They walked the corridors with her in tow and him practically tucked behind her cloak, listening, smiling occasionally...and though she made certain that he ate and took him to his room at nights so that he wasn't out watching the stars when he should have been sleeping, the rings about his eyes never really went away. Though, with time, she started to think of the issue less and less. They were together, after all, and he was such a sweet boy. His reactions made her smile and laugh, the blush on his cheek (and hers) when she'd excitedly take his hand to run somewhere, or the super-soft smile he'd let creep over his lips when she'd speak quietly about something she loved...her passion touching something inside of him that resonated and made his expression glow in return. She was amazed at how she could just...talk to him without ever growing tired or bored...how much his little smiles, his responses meant to her, made her feel happier or good. And she loved the way that he looked at her, really looked at her when she spoke...how he paid attention, how he never seemed to grow bored of her, think less of her, how he believed her and trusted her and how when he spoke back quietly sometimes, he had never lost his place and always seemed to be thinking about her stories, like they...she...mattered to him.

She just...liked being with him. And though others their age had tried, few had ever really managed to connect with him...so mostly, it was only her that he spent his time with. Alone, in the slowly-dying garden, or somewhere by her side...that was always where he could be found. It was comforting to know that...it made her happy in ways she couldn't really understand just yet.

They were always together, Evie and Lael...until they weren't.

...

"Lael...where did you come from...? Before, I mean...where was home?"

"I...don't remember...I'm not certain I ever had a...home."

"I'm sorry...but Lael, are you happy here, now? Does being here with me...us...make you happy?"

"...Yes..."

"Then from now on, this will be your home! We...we will be your family, Lael..."

He looked up at the stars above their heads on that warm summer night and a star shot across the sky like a crystalline rocket.

He smiled more honestly than he ever had, and his fingers gently covered her own, no trace of pink in his cheeks all the while.

"I will...stay here, then. With you...home..."

Evie had never been so happy since the day that her village fell.

...

She couldn't find him.

Her eyes were wide and worried as she moved through the halls of the Resistance's home base, bumping into her friends and the bosses as she rounded corners, but no matter how many corners she turned she couldn't find that familiar dark hair and pale skin. She had asked Sera, but there hasn't been any sign of the boy. Asking Zaitou had only lead him to remind her that he couldn't actually see anything, and since the two had never spoken, he wouldn't know what he was listening for in the first place. She was scared...she didn't know why she was so scared, except that there had been an attack in the base that morning and someone had been...hurt, badly, and were in the infirmary now barely hanging into life and the blood, oh god, the blood...it had been all over the cafeteria...

She needed to know that Lael was okay! She needed to know...so she searched, and she had almost reached the end of her rope when a memory came to her, that first time that he couldn't be found and where he had been! Her eyes widened and she begged security to let her outside, before having Naal distract them so that she could slip out and make her way to the garden...and there she found him.

Sitting amidst the grass, his pale skin a little paler than usual...his dark eyes a little brighter than usual, though somehow sadder than before. She traced her eyes over his body and found nothing out of place and she let out a relieved breath, her lips curling into a brilliant smile.

"Lael, I was so..." her eyes trailed at last to his hand...a gashed, ugly wound on the back of his hand leaking blood out onto the grass, staining the beautiful pink orchids and ugly red-black. He smiled at her weakly, but she could see through...she could tell that he was forcing. And she gasped, moving to her side and taking his wounded hand into her own, "Lael! Did he...did that man...do this?" She tore a piece of her shirt without thinking and began to wrap the hand, and his eyes softened so much that he nearly cried...tears forming at the corners of them that she dismissed as pain from the tightness of her wrap. She didn't think about what that look meant, or what he meant when he whispered sadly.

"Yes...he did this..."

She was just so happy to know that he was safe...

...

Two more people were in the infirmary now. Hanging on the verge of life or death. One likely wasn't going to make it. The other...was somewhere in between. Evie had seen less and less of Lael lately, and when she had seen him he was retreating, less talkative, sadder...the killings had clearly gotten to him and she was worried that he was afraid. She was worried that he would run. She was worried that...

She couldn't give voice to that thought, not even internally.

...

It was dark as she searched for him, the boy missing from his room yet again, but this time orchid garden had been bereft of the object of her...curiosity? Affection? She wasn't sure what to call it but she knew, somewhere inside of her, that over the months that they had been together Lael had become something...special to her. She cared about him more than he knew, and more than she realized, and the more that she thought about what this place would be like without him to listen to her, his smiles to brighten her day, his flushed expressions to make her feel...so happy, she wasn't sure what she was going to do anymore. He had become entwined with her happiness, and now he was going away from her, and she...needed to find him! She searched the cafeteria, the training room, but she couldn't find him. It was only when she heard the sound of laughter...the sound of crying...both in a familiar, and altogether unknown voice, nearby...that she knew in her stomach that she had found him.

But what she saw when she opened the door wasn't Lael. What she saw in the crimson eyes lingering in the corner in the darkness, not unlike the way she had found Lael, wasn't the soft innocence and gentle soul that she knew...

"Oh. It's you." the voice spat, disgust evidence enough that she recoiled physically...but steeling herself, she stepped into the room and moved to turn the lights on...but what she saw made her hesitate...what she felt beneath her feet, that wet squelching and the faint copper smell made her hesitate. He chuckled in the corner and she felt her heart drop somewhere below her stomach.

"Who...who are you...?!" she whispered sharply, barely able to give voice to anything...only the single question, the outright rejection of what her eyes were telling her, "You're not Lael...you can't be..."

"No, I'm not. Though I'd love to lead you on just enough to break your little heart in two," the voice sneered in the dark, its hatred for her, specifically bubbling over with each word, "My name, is Bael..."

...

Now it all made sense. Why he wouldn't sleep...what he was so afraid of, why he had locked himself in back at the laboratory and didn't want to let himself out. Why he was so hesitant to get to know anyone. This was the secret, the wall that shielded his heart from her until she had taken it down brick-by-brick, the truth behind the mystery.

Bael...Lael...two sides of the same coin.

But Lael was not Bael, she knew that...she couldn't believe anything different. She knew Lael, knew him. She...she cared about Lael, she loved Lael, and he...

He would never have hurt all of those people the way that Bael did. Lael was just sick...infected by this other...person. What was the thing the other Resistance leaders had called it? A...Papillon...something?

She wanted to help him...she had to help him! She couldn't...let them take him away from her because they didn't understand!

Evie didn't tell the others about Bael. She couldn't...

...

Lael disappeared from the base the following morning, never to return. Only Evie truly understood why...the rest merely came to the conclusion that she had feared they would. That Lael had been the attacker...and now he was running.

Evie knew that the only person Lael was running from was himself...

...

They had tried to talk her out of it, but there was nothing they could do to stop her. Nala said he wanted to come with her, but there were too many things that they needed him for here. He was so close in his work, and the other kids needed the last of the information that he had been gathering, so he would just have to entrust her to Naal. And Naal, for his part, was skeptical...but as always, he was at her side. They would leave the Resistance together, the same way they had left the Village together...ever since they were kids. Even if he didn't feel as strongly as she did about the person they were chasing, even if it was dangerous and stupid and there was all the chance in the world they were going to die searching, he would never abandon her.

She was so thankful for that. For everyone in the Resistance who had stood by her all this time, believed in her, been her friend. But as much as she loved them all, there was someone else she loved out there right now who needed her. And he was all alone right now...eating himself alive, believing he was to blame for so many things...maybe thinking that he was unloved, that she did not believe in him, but she...

...Against all odds, she did believe in him. She did care about him, and she...

She was going to find him.

...

"Evie...it will get dark before we reach the checkpoint if we don't leave now. ...Are we going?"

She smiled confidently, her resolve that had once been shaken was now steel. Her optimism, her light, could not be dimmed by doubt. Somewhere out there in this wide world was Lael, her Lael...and no matter where he had gone, she was going to find him. They would be together again. She was a Nekata, after all...they could do anything they put their minds to.

"Yeah! Naal...let's go!"

The doors to the Resistance home base opened...and the two of them ventured out together into the Corrupted Wastelands of Japan...with an uncanny hope inside of their hearts. The world may have ended, the flowers may have corrupted, and the skies might have darkened...but the light that shined inside of her eyes sparkled brighter than ever. And she would show it to him when she found him.

"Lael...I'm coming!"

She smiled, thinking to herself confidently as she looked down at the note he had left in her room the night before he'd left them. The last thing he had given to her before he'd disappeared.

...

'I am a black orchid, Corrupted and frail.
I wept and bathed in moonlight, surviving, but not living.
Your extended hand became my sun, your smile my sunlight.
You are my beloved sunflower.

...
Evie,

I am alive, I have lived, only because of you.

~Goodbye~'