Greetings, all.  This is my first post to this ML, and so I thought I'd start with my only non-
Dragonball story to date.  Any of you on the Escaflowne ML may recognize this, since the first 
draft was posted there some time back.  This is the second draft, and I hope to have a final 
draft done once you all are finished with it.  Since I've never posted anything before, I'll let you 
know that I want as thorough a C&C as you all are willing to give.  Negative reviews don't 
offend me, though I do ask that you tell me _why_ you didn't like it, though of course I'd like it 
best of all if everyone loved the story :-)  Basically, I'm looking to have you all rip it apart, so 
that when I put it back together again I have as close to perfect a story as I can get.  Oh, yes, 
if you haven't seen the whole series, or at least through episode 25, this will contain spoilers.

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Insert standard disclaimer about Escaflowne not being my creation here.  It's owned by quite a 
number of people, of whom I am not one.  Also, the dialog came almost straight from Central 
Anime's translation of episode 25, which was done by Hiroaki Fukuda, according to the 
credits on the script.  I played around with it a little, but I don't speak nearly enough Japanese 
to translate it myself.  The bulk of the story is non-dialogue, but since this is the latter half of 
episode 25 from Folken's perspective, the dialogue was necessary.  I don't have permission to 
use any of this, but it would be pointless to sue me, because I would have nothing to pay you 
with, anyway.

One final spoiler warning, if you haven't seen up to episode 25 at the very least, some 
significant information will be revealed that you haven't found out about yet.  Be warned.


Final Peace

A Tenkuu no Escaflowne fanfic
by
Jeremy Bunyard

I have faced dragons without fear, but what I am about to do terrifies me.  Would that this cup 
might pass from me, for I do not want to die.  I long to change my fate, to find a way to have 
more than the twenty-five years I seem to have been allotted.  I could do so, of that I am 
almost certain.  The same science with which I designed the stealth capes might be my 
salvation, but I will not even make the attempt.

A paradox?  Not at all, for it would mean leaving the fate of this world in Dornkirk's hands.  I 
have a dream, you see, and I invested much of myself in its pursuit when I served Zaibach -- 
when I believed my visions for a utopian Gaia to be the same as those of Dornkirk.  I have 
since realized my error, but I am no less responsible for what I have done to help bring 
Dornkirk to stand on the cusp of victory.

I could save myself, but my fate lies elsewhere.  What I do now I do for Gaia, and I 
cannot...*will* not...put my own life above that of my world.

"Van's suffering!  I want to help Van!" a young woman's voice cried out as its owner burst into 
my laboratory.  Kanzaki Hitomi, the girl from the Phantom Moon.  Her short, light brown hair 
was disheveled, and she was slightly out of breath.  Winded, but along with the worry and fear 
that shone like a beacon in her large, innocently expressive brown eyes, I could see that she 
was driven by a reserve of strength which went far beyond what even her physical body 
possessed.

"I was certain you would come."  She loved my brother, and he her.  That love had brought 
them together when worlds separated them.

Yet another reason why I will not change the fate that awaits me.

"But...I saw...Folken...You might die in Zaibach, Folken!" Concern filled her voice, fear for 
me, who had been her enemy such a short span of time ago.  When I left Zaibach, I was 
regarded with suspicion and mistrust by my new allies; A necessary evil because of my 
knowledge, but certainly not an ally.  She had placed her trust in me, she told me, because 
only by placing trust will it be returned.  Her courage, her faith, moved me; I can see why Van 
was willing to endure so much to protect her.

"You don't need to worry about that," I reassure her.  "I don't have much time left.  A reversal 
of fortune is shortening my life."  I slide my shirt over my head that I might sprout the wings my 
brother and I share -- the mark of the blood of the Dragon Clan, the descendants of Atlantis, 
which flows in our veins.  A shower of black feathers drift to the ground as I spread them to 
their full span.  "These dark wings attest to that."

"Dark wings..." she echoed, the shock evident in the widening of her eyes, the slight dropping 
of her jaw.  She had seen them once before, in Fanelia, but had not realized then the 
significance of their hue.

It is only just, I suppose, for if once I was an angel, I have certainly fallen far.

"I will atone for the sin of serving Dornkirk with my life.  That is my fate."  I allow none of my 
fear, none of my regret, to show.  I do not wish to make things any more difficult on the girl; 
she has already endured more than ever she should have had to.  I will not add my burden to 
her own.  She would all to readily take it upon herself -- that is her strength, and her 
vulnerability.

"That's not right!  I'll change such a sad fate!"  She clutched at her pendant, and the pink stone 
caught fire from within.  She sought to harness the power of her wish, the power of 
Atlantis...to save me?  For a second time, her compassion moves me, even if her will is pulled 
awry, reacting with the machinery I had been building.  The results she produced were nearly 
completely in opposition to her intentions -- the column of light sprang into being.  I had 
planned on using the machines to open it later, when she wasn't nearby.  She had asked me 
before to take her to Zaibach, that she could talk with Dornkirk, reason with him.  I had 
refused, my plan to go alone, my goal less innocent.

"They have arrived," an all-too-familiar voice booms out.  The voice of Zaibach -- Dornkirk.

"Where are we?" answered a disoriented voice from behind me.  Damn!  But even as I curse 
unwittingly involving Hitomi further, I wonder at the power in the girl, that all her desires are 
granted.  Would the last come to pass as well?  Would I somehow be saved?  My will to live 
exerts itself in a wild surge of desperate hope.

"Everything is in place," Dornkirk's voice continued, disregarding her question entirely.  "All the 
elements are in my hands.  It is time to fully activate the Fate Redirector.  Everything is going 
as I wish."  I can hear the gloating beneath his words, the supreme confidence of victory in 
hand.

"Your wish..." I ask, uncomprehending.

"Yes.  I guided fate so that you would bring the girl from the Phantom Moon here."

I was stunned for a moment, staring in open-mouthed shock, but then my righteousness -- and 
my anger -- returned.  Hitomi's last wish could not be granted.  There was no reasoning with 
Dornkirk; there was only one thing that would stop him.  The fate that is to come is justly mine.  
"How much are you going to twist fate?" I growl, furious.  He has used me again!

No different than when he gave me this mechanical arm, to replace the one that the fire dragon 
took from me so long ago.  I should have seen him for what he was back then.  This was 
Dornkirk's utopia.  Gaia, free from war and hatred and killing.  Equally free from anything else 
that makes us who we are.  Replaced with the cold, precise efficiency of steel.  Automatons, 
utterly inhuman.

"Stupid question," he answers.  "You know what I think, don't you?"

I fight to keep my fury in check, with only limited success.  "Then you know of my 
determination."

"You came to kill me, did you not?  Go ahead, do it!  There's no one to stop you!"  The great 
machine which is the heart of Zaibach whirs to life, bringing the ancient, withered body of 
Dornkirk out into the open, unprotected by the many life-support systems which have 
sustained him far beyond any normal human lifespan.  He opens his arms, as if to welcome me 
-- death, his personal dark angel -- to him with an embrace.

"Folken..."

Hitomi.  She must feel the hatred radiating from me, see it in the tautness of every muscle of 
my body, in the grimace that has contorted the normally placid features of my face.  She puts 
her hand on my shoulder, a gentle attempt at restraining me, but I jerk it away.

"Come on, Folken!"  He mocks even my resolve, and that is the last straw.  My anger swells, 
consumes me.

"Folken, don't!" Hitomi shouts, but I am beyond hearing.

"You're insane!" I scream at him, the rising tide of my fury lifting me into the air as I draw my 
sword.  Always before when I have flown, I have felt the exhilaration that comes with the 
freedom of being able to break the bonds of the earth.  This time, the exhilaration is of another 
sort -- one in which my enemy is before me, awaiting only the final blow to be vanquished, and 
whose destruction  -- by *my* hand -- will mean the safety of all I hold dear.  This dragon will 
not escape, leaving my broken body behind.  I will kill this dragon!

My vision is clouded by a red haze and the pounding of thunder in my head as I land on top of 
the great machine, as I bring my sword down and cleave the unresisting, decrepit husk of 
Dornkirk in two with a single stroke.

He erupts in a geyser of viscous green fluid; not even his blood was still that of a human.  
Nothing more than fate-enhanced, life preserving fluid.  He was as much machine as man, if 
not more.  A dark reminder of what I myself might have become.

It is a pain in my chest that shatters the grip my hatred holds on me; the tide of my rage has 
crashed and ebbed, leaving me to lie spent amid the rocks of the shore.  The tip of my sword 
had broken on the machine as I struck Dornkirk and lodged itself near my heart.  Suddenly, 
free from my rage, a clarity that I had not known since the first time I stared into the eyes of a 
fire dragon with nothing save acceptance descended upon me.

"I see...this is the center of redirecting fate...where action and reaction are at their strongest."  I 
saw now the true enormity of my sins.  The power of Atlantis, the power to redirect fate, was 
the power of wishes.  What is a wish, but the incarnation of desire?  I, who had told Van how 
hatred and fear begot nothing save violence and war, had allowed my own desire for 
vengeance on Dornkirk to overcome me.  Here, where by killing Dornkirk I was just as surely 
killing myself.  Where my actions, my hatred, would be magnified a thousandfold and 
projected outward to consume all of Gaia.

I think I would have given in to despair just then, as I started to fall backward, the wound to 
my chest condemning me to a slow but certain death, able to do little more than watch as the 
destiny Dornkirk and I had created unfolded.  Had I done so, all would have been lost, for the 
fate being created would have become absolute.  Hatred and violence leading inevitably to 
despair and death.

Instead, I saw a vision.  Perhaps something like what Hitomi must see, a vision of what had 
been, and of what might be.

Escaflowne, with Van astride the magnificent dragon, soaring to the heavens -- pushing higher, 
even when he rose above the very winds upon which he rode, determined that no distance, not 
even the vast gulf between Gaia and the Phantom Moon itself, would keep him from his love.  
And so, when the column of light once again bridged that gulf, Kanzaki Hitomi and my brother 
were reunited.

Hope filled the void where despair had so nearly taken root.  "But the war will end.  I wish 
true peace to Gaia."

And I knew my wish would become reality.  I had told Dornkirk not long before that the 
Dragon lacked courage, but no longer.  In the face of such determination as his, in the face of 
such potent love, nothing as small and petty as hatred could even hope to be all-consuming.

I watched, as if from outside myself, as my body toppled, as it smashed against the great 
machine before taking its final, long descent to the ground below, limp wings no longer able to 
catch the winds.  At the same time, more real to me than my falling form, I could see my 
brother guiding Escaflowne through what remained of the battlefield.

"Van..." I call out to him.  There is so much I still want to say, so may that I have never been 
able to tell him.  So much pain between us that we have yet to overcome.  In that moment, I 
willed that he know all I had left unsaid -- all my hopes, my dreams, my regret for all the time 
we never had together.  How much he heard I cannot say; At least some, I think.

Dimly, in the background, I am aware of Hitomi's voice, shouting my name.

Gradually, the vision fades.  I can no longer feel either Van or Hitomi.  But my dream for Gaia 
will be safe, carried on the wings of a white dragon, and that is enough, as the darkness 
enfolds me.


FIN