+Anima fic draft 2


"So I die here after all." He had to force the words out in a single raspy hiss, before the pain of inhalation dropped him to his kness. It seemed an eternity before he got himself upright again, a series of hitching breaths and short, jerky motions. Around him, there were voices, unimportant cacophany, but he singled out the dry snap of feathers in the air - wingbeats.

He lifted a hand, trying to reach his treasure, but his fingers slipped - of course, they were wet. He was wet all over. "Earrings," he whispered finally, unable to remove them himself. "You have to sell ... them ... boat to Astaria."

"We're not going anywhere without you." And that was Cooro, obstinate to the core, but he -

"- sorry can't ..." There was a great yawning gulf between himself and the world, it seemed. His own voice sounded off, wrong, like his head had been shoved in a bag or perhaps underwater -

What was he doing? Of course. He had to warn - "Can't stay. In Sailand. Not +anima or - even people. Not here. Everyone just wants to kill you here."

He noticed then, very precisely but very dissociatively, that he was not seeing anything. There were blurs that he could not seem to understand as images.

"You are entirely too melodramatic for your own good," a firm, commanding voice stated scathingly.


He woke. He always woke at that point, heart beating madly and skin chilling rapidly from drying sweat. By habit, he reached for the curving ridge of scar in his side, and then the two sapphires in his ears. All intact, he was able to reassure himself that he was not a ghost.

It was early morning, dawn yet hours off. Scowling, he threw off the covers and headed for a bath. He would soak, and then he ought to see if the library had acquired any new books in the past eight months.

However, upon exiting the bath, he found that Prince Keane had beaten him to his favorite chair, a fresh pot of coffee steaming on a nearby tray. "What are you doing up?"

"You're horribly predictable," Keane said, a touch of exasperation in his voice. "You know, it would be much simpler to put you two in the same room to begin with. You'd get more sleep and we would save a set of clean sheets."

Husky growled, then pointedly circled widely around the chair to pour a cup. "I don't have nightmares the rest of the year. And I refuse to presume."

"Aren't you past that stage yet?" Keane demanded. "You've only been spending the last -"

"Absolutely not discussing this with you!" Husky hissed, making violent shushing motions with his free hand. "And definitely not where he could overhear!"

The prince rolled his eyes. Husky would have loved to have called him on the childish gesture, but his own behavior was not much better. "You're the one who tells me that he sleeps like a rock - how did you put it? A rock buried under a landslide. Please."

The scowl returned a hundredfold. "We are not talking about this."

Keane groaned. "I knew I should have talked them into letting me have hard liquor. You, my friend, have a problem."

Husky did not smile. "My friend," he said heavily, "I have never pretended otherwise."


I just realized that for all of that (which I mostly wrote during chemistry class), I did not actually yet USE any of the painstakingly researched and crafted details I went to great lengths to obtain over the past few weeks. wtf, brain.

Oh, well. Next up: Nana, breakfast, spring plans. (It's late fall, early winter. I need to mention that and the time elapsed since divergence from the manga - did I mention this is AU? It's AU. There.)