[YokoTsuta]: 250.As the Night Goes On.Candlesticks and Cigarettes

Hana slowly opened her eyes, her vision blurred slightly, to find herself in a dark room, lying on a bed. She sat up, looking around wildly. Where was she? Why was she here?

"Calm down, you're safe here," Riku mumbled around a cigarette. He sat in a small chair in a nearby corner of the room and looked sideways at her, smiling.

Hana let out a relaxed sigh, relieved that he was still with her. She squinted in the dark light to see around the room. A small, round table sat in a corner, surrounded by two massive, overstuffed chairs. A large chest of drawers was pushed up against a wall, with a dusty, oval shaped mirror propped up on a small sink next to it. Candles littered the room, their soft light illuminating the smoke filled air. A travel case was lying open in front of the chest of drawers. Assorted weapons had overflowed onto the floor out of the case, a few pairs of clothes hardly filling the other side.

Hana looked back at Riku's corner.

"Hmm...I need to shave," Riku muttered, examining his face in the mirror on the other side of the room from his chair. Hana quickly turned at the sound of his voice and stared at him. He glanced at her reflection in the mirror and smirked.

"Let me hazard a guess, you're thinking 'How the hell did he get over there?' right?" Riku smirked, fishing a razor out of a bag. Hana's jaw dropped slightly as he voiced her thoughts.

"I think I'm not gonna tell right now, love. I'll tell when the time is right," he said, smiling at her in the mirror.

She kept staring at him as he was shaving, wondering what this thin man could be. He rinsed the razor in the sink and splashed cold water on his face, drying off with a small hand towel. He smiled at himself in the dusty mirror. Hana looked at his smiling face and all of her dark thoughts seemed to evaporate from her. She looked down, just now noticing that she was in different clothes. She glared at Riku, who had turned around to look at her. He raised an eyebrow, not understanding the meaning of the glare.

"You undressed me?" She stared accusingly at him.

Riku blushed, looking down at the floor, showing an uncertainty he hadn't before.

She continued to glare at him.

"Um...there's a bathroom down the hall...be ready to leave in an hour," he muttered with his back to her, walking out the door. Hana frowned slightly as he silently closed the large wooden door behind him.

She slid off the side of the bed and walked over to Riku's case. The weapon side was mainly packed with banned knives, throwing stars, three short swords, a few oversized guns, and numerous packs of bullets, all of different sizes and purposes. Hana picked up one of the guns, examining it. Cryptic writing seemed to flow out of the end of the barrel, as red as fire near the end, fading to a deep purple near the trigger. She carefully set it next to the other gun, which had similar patterns. She moved over to look at the opposite side of the case, rummaging around for bathing essentials. She found Riku's bag and searched it, pulling out a bar of soap and a small bottle of shampoo.

She peered out of the door, into complete darkness. She took a candle from atop the chest of drawers and cautiously stepped out of the room. Outside was a long hallway, decorated with banners, torn war flags, and battered paintings depicting kings and queens of old. Dust hung heavily in the air and covered the hall in thick layers. Hana looked down at the dark wooden floor, where her feet had already made tracks. There were no other footprints besides her own, not even a hint that it had been disturbed within the last fifty years.

She walked up to the nearest painting, looking at the face that stared straight ahead as it had likely done for centuries. She was staring at an almost mirror image of Riku. His hair was jet black, just barely brushing his shoulders. The same roguish smile played about his face, expertly painted by some unknown artist.

Hana cautiously moved down the hallway, stopping at the next painting. She knew what she would see but still held her candle up, confirming her fears. Another image of Riku's face gazed at her. She proceeded down the hall, her pace quickening as Riku peered out at her from every painting. Each picture showed that same face but all sorts of different clothes, hair styles, and portrayals of his deathly pale skin. They seemed to be from all different times, from all over the world, progressing back farther and farther in time as she shuffled down the hallway.

As she neared the end of the hallway, she turned to look at another of the numerous pictures and froze in her tracks. This picture reached high up near the ceiling, dominating everything else in the wide hallway. Hana held her candle up, her jaw dropping slightly as she studied the massive portrait. A young girl, appearing to be in her teenage years, with fair complexion and long golden hair showering over her shoulders in loose ringlets smiled at her from high above. Her soft blue eyes seemed almost as if she had been hiding something, her slight smirk confirming it. Hana backed away from the painting slowly, staring at the girl that looked perfectly like her. She dropped the candle and ran, fumbling blindly in the dark. She slammed into a partially open door, forcing it open into the wall as she fell, skidding on the tiled floor.

She stared in awe at the large, radiant room. Candles were everywhere she looked, giving the room a warm, cheerful glow, much unlike the hallway. A lofty ceiling gave the room an open feeling, the slight shimmer like stars enhancing the feeling even more. Three doors faced her on the opposite side of the room. Each had a different sign engraved into it with the rough, hasty strokes of a small knife. A circle was cut into the door on the left, the same circle on the door to the right. In the middle door was roughly emblazed the shape of a knife within a triangle. She curiously traced the outline of the knife and she reached to open the door. She looked down at the floor, picking up the small piece of paper that lay at her feet.

"Do not enter..." she read aloud. "That's lame. This isn't some horror movie or something." She grabbed the doorknob and pulled. Locked.

She quickly paced to the door on her right and savagely yanked at the door handle. Again locked. The door to her left. It easily opened, causing Hana to almost fall over. She stared at it, almost afraid of what she might find. Why is this the only door unlocked? she mused and cautiously peered into the room. Inside was the bathroom she had been searching for. It was nearly as grand as the room outside it but quite a bit smaller. Flowing, sheer cloth hung down from the ceiling, making a circle around an enormous bath tub in the center of the room. The tub was built into the tiled floor, raised only a foot and a half. Candles hung from the ceiling on small round platforms, each one creating a small bubble of light around it. She went to set Riku's things down on the edge of the tub and stared inside. It had already been filled; complete with bubbles and scented with lavender.

She sank beneath the bubbles, contemplating all the thoughts trashing around in her head like why the hell she was there, could she trust Riku, and who was in that portrait in the hallway?