Soldiers of the Far-Between Part 2
A Cobalt Cry
The ship of white Seeds slept.
Ellone couldn't sleep. She got up and stood on the deck, looking out over the ocean that Zone was skillfully sailing. The moon shone on the waves, but the darkness of the sea was fathomless.
She didn't like the night. It frightened her. She liked sunshine, and the field of flowers near the orphanage, and the bright blue sky above it. At night over the ocean, all the colors had drained from the world, leaving it empty.
Ellone leaned over the rail, trailing her fingers gently through the warm water. She wished she could sleep away the night. She usually could. Not tonight.
She was worried about Squall. She always worried about him a little, because she figured that a sister was supposed to worry about her brother, especially a brother that was the general of a powerful army. But this wasn't her normal big-sister worry about Squall's battles, his enemies and his trials. This was different.
It had started a few nights before. She had felt Squall's dreams, seen the boy with the cobalt eyes. Ellone had gotten a funny feeling about him. Something bad is going to happen to Squall, that feeling said. And this blue-eyed boy would have a part in it. Ellone tried to talk to him through her thoughts.
// Be careful, Squall, // she thought. // Look out, be careful, something bad is going to happen. And it's all going to start with him. //
Usually, when Ellone felt something about someone, it was Squall. She knew when he was happy, even if it didn't show to anyone else. She felt when he was sad or upset. When he was hurt or sick, she felt his pain. She always knew when he was going into combat.
She felt things about Quistis, Zell, Selphie, Irvine, and Rinoa, as well. Other people too, like Zone and Watts. Seifer. Laguna, Kiros, Ward, and some of the white Seeds. But she didn't feel half as much about them as she did about Squall and Laguna. The more she loved someone, the more things she felt about them.
When she felt Squall worrying about these dreams, these dreams about the younger boy, Ellone wanted badly to tell him that she knew how he felt, and that he was right to be worried. Because just knowing that Ellone felt his fear would make Squall feel better. But she hadn't been able to communicate with him since his dreams started, and she didn't know why.
Somehow, he and the boy were connected. When she tried to send Squall a warning a few days before, // Something bad is going to happen, Squall, something terrible and strange... //, the boy had picked it up instead of Squall. Maybe because both of them had a connection to Squall. Ellone didn't know. She couldn't figure it out.
Ellone didn't know who to tell Squall the boy was. She really didn't know. She thought at first that he was an enemy, someone who was going to do something to Squall, but other times he didn't feel like an enemy. Just cold, inside and out. She shivered whenever she felt his presence.
She didn't want to get these feelings, but she couldn't tune them out, either, because the cry out was a cobalt flash in her mind. She tuned it. Now Ellone stood on the ship deck, looking out into the dark night sky, and she felt the boy out there, felt him like ice-water in her veins, or a cold draft against her heart. The boy was far, far away, not anywhere near Squall, but he was coming.
For Squall's sake, she reached into the dark. Into the night. Toward the far-away where the blue-eyed soldier lived and dreamed his own fevered dreams of fire and war. In that far away, the boy's mind was loose in sleep, free and uninhibited by his brutal training. He was a being that didn't belong in their world, an alien soldier that wasn't in their world yet, but he would be soon.
Ellone reached out, felt the boy's presence. Cold and full of sadness. Fear and anger. Emptiness. She wanted to get closer to him, learn who he was. She tried sending thoughts to him.
// Who are you? What are you? Where are you? What do you want? What are these monsters called mobile suits? What is a Gundam? //
Suddenly, she felt someone pulling back at her thoughts, but it wasn't the blue-eyed boy. It was someone else from his extension. The only person Ellone had felt do this before was Squall. It frightened her that someone from that other world would be able to do it, too.
~*~
In the darkness of the safehouse, Quatre dozed and awoke repeatedly with a start, but he wasn't having any nightmares that he knew of.
Sometime in the night, he had felt an unknown presence touch his space heart. He'd never before had someone reach out to him before. He was extremely disturbed by the encounter, unsure whether it was menacing or benevolent, and anxious to understand it.
He thought at first that it may have been one of the other pilot's nightmares, reaching out for unvoiced help, and he had checked on each of them. Trowa still slept beside him undisturbed. Duo and Heero were wrapped in each other's arms in their room--they always started out sleeping at separate sides of the bed, then always ended up moving next to one another in the middle of the night, Quatre noticed with mild amusement--and Wufei was sprawled gracelessly across the couch. Besides, he thought to himself as he walked back to his bed, he would have recognized them. Each of them had a specific presence in his mind, individual as scents or colors.
For a while, he dozed again, falling against Trowa's chest. When he woke with a start again, he felt questions dart through his mind, echoing there.
// Who... what... where... what... who... why... where... what... why...? //
Quatre sat straight up in bed, perfectly still, and eventually the presence grew more confident. It lay on his mind lightly, then left, then lit up his heart again, like a child playing with a light switch, flicking it on and off.
Quatre was picking up some of the thoughts from the other person, even though he didn't think they were aware that their thoughts were coming through. The name "Squall" came to him several times. One time, a very clear image flitted through with the name--a handsome, older teenager with dark hair and stormy gray eyes. The boy looked a lot like Quatre imagined Heero would look if he lived to be eighteen. Quatre didn't know if this was the face of the person invading his mind, or the face of someone that person knew.
The Arabian pilot heard the words "mobile suits" and "Gundams" a few times, and once a fuzzy image that might have been Heero's face. Quatre heard many other things he couldn't make any sense of:
--Guardian Force--
--cobalt soldier--
--strange crossing--
--Balamb--
--Seeds--
Almost half an hour passed without the intruder's thoughts, and Quatre thought that maybe she--he didn't know how he knew it was a she, but he knew now without a doubt that was what it was--had left permanently. And then she was back, her connection stronger than before. Suddenly, in a violent move, Quatre pressed forward strongly, grabbing the other's mind in an iron grip, trying to hold it long enough to figure out who it was, and what they wanted.
The intruder was named Ellone, she was afraid of Heero, of Quatre, and of something happening to her "brother" Squall; these terrors crushed her mental defenses. There was so much information coming from her end that Quatre couldn't catch all of it.
// White Seeds black Seeds mercenaries magic summons the Sorceress Balamb Garden Squall please be careful Fisherman's horizon Zell be brave Selphie cheer up Irvine don't chase girls Quisty don't be too hard on him Seifer //
/ Who are you? / Quatre thought, gazing into the darkness.
TBC...
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